Chili and the Chocolate Factory: Fudge Revelation
by gazemaize
Summary: "I, Charles Bucket, have decided to allow six children - just six, mind you, and no more - to visit my factory this year." Rational, but not strictly. Finished.
1. The First Ticket

Dear Everyone,

I, Charles Bucket, have decided to allow six children - just six, mind you, and no more - to visit my factory this year. These lucky six will be shown around personally by me, and they will be allowed to see all the secrets and the magic of my factory. Then, at the end of the tour, as a special present, all of them will be given enough chocolates and sweets to last them for the rest of their lives! So watch out for the Golden Tickets! Six Golden Tickets will be awarded to the first six minors to solve the puzzle I've placed on my wonderful whimsical WonkaWeb. This simple puzzle may be solved on any device with access to the Internet, no matter how slow. And the six smart solvers of my simply stupendous screen-based stumper are the only ones who will be allowed to visit my factory and see what it's like now inside! Good luck to you all, and happy head-scratching!

(Signed Charles Bucket, WonkaWeb URL attached below.)

_**W**_

"Children are worthless," said Grandpa Groinfogger. "Especially you."

Several feet away from the tattered mattress where his mother's father was slowly dying, Chili Floss sat on the hard wooden floor. He was reading a book about planes.

He turned the page, not looking up.

"Okay, Grandpa."

"Disobedient children are the most worthless children of all, remember. And you are being disobedient, by refusing to listen and enter the contest. So that makes you very worthless indeed."

"Your conclusion follows from the premises, Grandpa. Good job."

The room they shared was small and cramped, with no windows and one door that led directly outside. There was no electricity for heating and no furniture other than Grandpa's bed and a smelly bucket. A large pile of books rested in the corner of the room Chili slept in, all stolen from various libraries.

The room was dark, Chili only able to read by the light coming in from the many holes in the ceiling. He was scrawny, even for a nine year old, his naturally brown hair matted and covered with enough dirt to color it black. He was very malnourished, which he knew both from the books he had read on the subject and his reflection. His body was short and stunted: if given the opportunity to guess, most people would have placed him closer to five than ten.

"You're lazy and rotten and ugly. Enter the contest."

"No," said Chili, turning another page. "I don't care about candy."

"It isn't candy, you brat. It's _chocolate._ A lifetime supply."

"I don't care about that either."

Chili was lying. He loved food, and he especially loved candy, and he _especially_ loved chocolate. He had been three when his mother died, and he had scrounged and stolen every calorie devoured since himself, meals sourced from trash cans and broken vending machines and unguarded dog dishes.

Food. There was never enough and there never would be. He lived in a city with many like him and most were stronger and faster and better at scavenging than him. The mayor of the city he lived in often gave speeches about the _problems_, about the need to pour bleach on food that was going in the trash, about the new advancements in architecture that would help to curb the terrible issue of Chili and his ilk trying to exist. Boulders on the sidewalks. Slanted benches. Hidden cameras in the big parks that detected if someone was trying to sleep there, automatically activating sprinklers and loud classical music.

Not even the good stuff. Chopin.

He tried to ignore his grandfather and get back to his book. It didn't work.

Reading wasn't an escape. Food was in the words too, and so were the people that got to eat it. Instead, books gave him the only source of fuel he had access to without restriction, hate.

He hated how much they ate. There were many children's books about miserable poor orphans supposedly like him, but they were always eventually fed at one point or another, always whisked off to a lives where stomachs stayed full. Magic banquet halls filled with floating pumpkin pies, fruits so gigantic that they could be lived in.

Chili despised the authors who wrote stories like that, where fictional children weren't allowed to stay hungry and miserable so he - a very real one - could better relate to them. Some books that weren't written for children were a little better about it, but not by much. Dahl's Chickens was one of the worst offenders, in his opinion. Oliver Twist was a needy loser who wouldn't have known good gruel if it bit him in the butt.

Books were still better than reality. He watched kids his age with quadruple chins waltz out of candy stores carrying more bars than he pictured himself ever eating and he hated them too. They ate gold while he ate dirt, and they didn't even know it, didn't have to.

Chili had eaten chocolate six times in his life, and each time had him locating the smallest child he could find, usually a girl much younger than him, and following them once they left the candy store. Each time he ran up behind them and pushed them hard to the ground, taking the procured sweets and dashing off. He was rougher than he had to be, always surprising himself with how much time he wasted kicking them over and over when he should have been running.

It felt good. They wore shoes with laces and had _pocket phone computers _that they carried with them that were worth more than everything he and his grandfather owned and then some. They slept in beds and got told very often that somebody loved them. That made it fair, then, that they experienced the sliver of pain he could provide. Of course it did.

He always held the Wonka bars in his hands and told himself that he would savor it and make it last and he never did. It was too good, it was too much. They fell down his throat like rainwater.

"Shut up. All worthless children love chocolate. Enter the contest."

"No," said Chili, turning another page. "And I don't see why you care. You'll be dead, soon enough. No amount of chocolate will change that."

Grandpa Groinfogger had not left his bed for many months. Chili had paid attention to his symptoms and stolen a medical textbook, diagnosing him with an unknown type of mid-stage cancer. Chili didn't care about his grandfather, but he had informed him of what he thought was happening, and he had been promptly told to stuff it.

It was good timing. Chili had recently begun to think about heading to an adult and going to an orphanage and ending his life as a problem. It seemed like a good plan, on the surface. He would get food and shelter. He would start growing again. He might even get one of the phone computers everybody but them seemed to have.

He decided that he would go at some point, but not immediately. The first and less important reason for the delay was that he didn't like the idea of formal education, of being told what to read instead of choosing himself. He disliked the concept even more than he did the hunger. The choice was important to him, even if he had trouble explaining why.

The real reason was because he wanted to watch Grandpa Groinfogger die. He would go after that.

"You're an idiot. You don't know anything. The chocolate is just there so worthless children like you will pay attention and enter. The real prize is the _tour_."

Chili stole newspapers and magazines too, and he had seen the contest mentioned. It was on the front page. The owner of Wonka Industries and the king of the sovereign micronation of Wonkaland, Charles Bucket, was holding a contest.

It was simple. There was a puzzle that could be taken by anyone under the age of eighteen, available from any machine with access to the internet. The first six who could solve it would win a "Golden Ticket", which would earn them both a lifetime supply of all Wonka products and a tour of a country that hadn't been seen by outsiders since 1964. After seventy years, it would welcome only those six, as well as two parents and guardians to accompany them to the factory.

Chili hadn't allowed himself to read more of the article than that. He recognized the rare feeling that popped up in his heart as hope, and it needed to be quashed.

He had seen what hope did. When he had still been able to walk and occasionally find temporary work, hope forced Grandpa Groinfogger to spend every last dollar he earned on lottery tickets. They were shiny pieces of paper covered with cherries and numbers and _lies._ It was the only time he'd ever seen him smile, right before he started scratching. Never did he win anything more than a token - nobody ever won anything big from them, Chili had already figured out - and never did he stop buying them, no matter how angry he had been at the previous loss.

"Again, I don't care."

Grandpa Groinfogger coughed and spat. Chili always gave his grandfather the newspapers when he was finished with them, and in spite of sickness he always read them to the last word.

"Think, idiot! A man who isn't named Wonka owns Wonka. The last time they ran this contest, they held a competition for the worthless children who made it to the tour, and the winner, Bucket, he inherited the company, everything. Now Bucket himself is old, so he wants to do it again. To find an heir. That's the real prize and everybody knows it. That's the only way you ever leave this place."

He didn't let the new information affect his judgement. Chili didn't have a computer or access to one, and untold millions were probably solving the puzzle as they spoke. He had read a book about statistics. His odds, if we were to try, were not bad. They simply didn't exist.

It was better not to try. Not to give into the delusion like all the other problems. The Golden Tickets were no different than any of the tickets his grandfather had bought. Lies.

"Answer me. Enter the contest. Win."

"We don't have a computer. And I don't know how to use one, anyway."

"Figure it out."

"No. Leave me alone." He turned another page in his book despite having not finished the one he was on.

His grandfather laughed.

"Fine. Stay worthless. But keep reading the papers with me. Watch them. If they have pictures, watch the way they smile, and tell me you want to keep sitting there."

Chili didn't respond.

"You'll see them smile, and you'll get up and find a way to win. I remember what it was like watching them find them, all those years ago. You aren't ready for it."

"Shut up. Die already."

"One million times worse than watching them get to eat chocolate. One billion, maybe."

_**W**_

XxX_Blakin_XxX: IT'S BEEN UP TWELVE HOURS

XxX_Blakin_XxX: THERE MUST BE AT LEAST A BILLION PEOPLE GUESSING

XxX_Blakin_XxX: HOW HAS NOBODY SOLVED THIS YET

BBQbae: nobody tell that blakin that we already all figured it out

XxX_Blakin_XxX: fuck you

XxX_Blakin_XxX: AHH I WANT MY CHOCOLATE FACTORY AND I WANT IT NOW

GW: Stop spamming the chat with all caps, Blakin. Second warning.

BBQbae: you aren't even a minor, it isn't like you actually could claim the prize

XxX_Blakin_XxX: the website literally just ASKS you if you are under 18

XxX_Blakin_XxX: surprised it doesn't want my parent's permission

BBQbae: i'm sure they are going to want to verify if you solved it

BBQbae: not that YOU have to worry about that possibility lol

XxX_Blakin_XxX: well i was going to invite you to my factory when I won but that's cancelled

BBQbae: love you too

yatch: i tried plugging and unplugging my keyboard for fifteen minutes, it doesn't work if anyone's curious

gremlin_guard: I've been stuck at an airport for the last twelve hours, and my inbox blew up with notifications the moment I turned my phone on. I'm young and also not a history buff. Could anyone super knowledgeable about Wonka/Wonkaland/Bucket give me the rundown on what's happening?

XxX_Blakin_XxX: tl;dr: chocolate man bad

the_ladwhocan: I've read a decent amount of Wonka stuff. I'm busy finishing something else right now, but if you give me a few minutes I can give you a summary. Do you know much about the first contest?

gremlin_guard: Not much beyond the basics.

David1: I don't think the solution is going to be as simple as just guessing a password. Would have been brute forced by now.

XxX_Blakin_XxX: wow, really, you think?

XxX_Blakin_XxX: wow never would have guessed

GW: Last warning, Blakin.

XxX_Blakin_XxX: that message wasn't even in caps

XxX_Blakin_XxX: UNLIKE THIS

_[XxX_Blakin_XxX has been temporarily banned from chat.]_

GW: See you in three days, Blakin.

yatch: brutal

the_ladwhocan: Best summary I can manage with the time I have: By 1940, the largest and most financially successful confection-producer in the world is Wonka's Chocolate Factory (later known as Wonka Industries), owned and headed by Willy Wonka.

the_ladwhocan: Wonka is known for quality and originality, coming up with new advancements in candy-tech unseen up to that point. Competitors do what competitors do and try to imitate, but they can't, so they steal, sending in spies to see how they make it.

the_ladwhocan: Wonka himself loses it once they start selling replications of his ideas. Fires his entire staff and announces that his factory will be closing forever.

yatch: good story, I liked it

the_ladwhocan: Shut up

the_ladwhocan: But about three years later, the factory starts loading up chocolate into trucks and taking orders again. And the stuff is just as good and just as popular. But the gates to the factory were still closed, not counting the product coming out.

the_ladwhocan: Were the workers secretly rehired or replaced? Nobody could find out. How were they still making chocolate?

GW: Automation?

the_ladwhocan: Such is the modern consensus, yes. But at the time that level of automation (10K+ workers to none in less than a couple years) was unthinkable.

the_ladwhocan: Time marches on until 1964, nothing changing. Wonka sends out a letter to all major newspapers announcing a contest: five golden tickets (literal gold-colored tickets) inside Wonka bars, and everybody gets a lifetime supply of chocolate and a tour of the factory.

the_ladwhocan: It was pandemonium. People died trying to get these tickets. Forgeries, fights, small riots in certain cities, 24/7 news coverage at a time where that was a BIG deal...

the_ladwhocan: Five winners eventually revealed themselves, all children. One was Charles Bucket. Others were Augustus Gloop, Violet Beauregarde, Veruca Salt, and Mike Teavee.

BBQbae: Was it a rule that they had to be children? I don't remember

the_ladwhocan: He never said that they had to be kids, but the media statement went out seemed to imply that it only would be.

the_ladwhocan: "I, Willy Wonka, have decided to allow five children — just five, mind you, and no more — to visit my factory this year."

the_ladwhocan: The fact that all were is seen as evidence that it might have been fraudulent or that they might have been pre-selected.

GW: Other coincidences have also been noted.

gremlin_guard: Such as?

the_ladwhocan: He's probably referring to them all being caucasion.

XxX_Blakin_XxX_52: bastard only cared about white chocolate

_[XxX_Blakin_XxX_52 has been permanently banned from chat.]_

GW: Try to evade again and I'll permaban your main account too.

GW: Please stop.

the_ladwhocan: I don't want to get sidetracked on this, but I've heard this theory before and I don't think it's as persuasive as it might appear.

the_ladwhocan: This is the strongest version of it: "All five kids were white. About 12% of the world population is white. 0.12 x 0.12 x 0.12 x 0.12 x 0.12 = 0.00002. It's way more likely that this didn't happen and Wonka cheated somehow to prevent non-white kids from winning than it was to have just worked out that way, which demonstrates that the contest was partially or totally rigged."

the_ladwhocan: This has some problems. Right now in 2034, Europe consumes 50% of the world's chocolate. The US alone is another 20%, with Africa responsible for less than 3% (which is especially sad considering that the Ivory Coast alone produces about 40% of the cocoa bean supply, but that's another conversation and I'm already off on a tangent). This disparity was probably waaay worse in the sixties, too.

the_ladwhocan: Plus, white people statistically are (and were) more likely to hold more wealth, which meant buying more chocolate and having more chances to buy a bar with a winning GT.

the_ladwhocan: Wonka not accounting for these factors (he didn't seem to mind the rich kids having the much better chance of winning?) definitely holds some screwed up social undertones and can be criticized, but I don't think it's fair to immediately call it rigged and him a hard racist on the sole basis of all five kids being white. I think these are better described as societal problems than they are Wonka's personal faults.

BBQbae: so it wasn't rigged?

the_ladwhocan: Oh, I'm not saying that.

the_ladwhocan: I personally think it was, actually. But the race thing isn't great evidence for it and we'll probably never know for sure.

the_ladwhocan: To continue on: all five winners plus five guardians were allowed to enter the factory.

the_ladwhocan: What we know from this point on is based on only three sources: the interviews that all four of the parents gave immediately after exiting the factory, a book written by Salt published about a year after the fact, and a long series of blog posts written by Teavee forty years post-tour

yatch: you uh, know your wonka, huh

the_ladwhocan: Guilty as charged.

yatch: also mashing hard on your keyboard doesn't work

yatch: at least the way I did it

the_ladwhocan: The Salt book is four hundred pages and considered close to useless as a source of useful information. The first ninety percent of the book is an autobiography and a lot of what she wrote about her tour experience is definitely fabricated and the rest of it is probably fabricated.

the_ladwhocan: It's the worst thing I've ever read. Over one dozen ghostwriters have come out over the years claiming to have written what ended up being one or a few chapters of it, and the accepted theory is that Salt's family kept hiring ghostwriters who wrote full drafts that they weren't happy with. So they took whatever part of every draft they found acceptable and jammed it together in a single book and then let Salt herself (who, remember, was in primary school) edit it as much as she wanted before publishing it themselves through a vanity press they bought.

the_ladwhocan: It doesn't even have an ending. I'm not kidding. It ends in the middle of a long run on sentence making fun of how fat she thought Augustus was.

yatch: lmaooo

the_ladwhocan: The initial interviews gave us most of what we had to work with, but they were contradictory on some details and not super clear, the parents being as emotional as they were. And some of the details they did agree were… unreliable.

the_ladwhocan: Some of the stuff they said is BATSHIT, but it was given some credibility at the time because they all mostly agreed on it.

the_ladwhocan: Now most agree it was a scheme cooked up by Beauregarde's father (a car salesman) to discredit Wonka, going off the "if you tell a lie, tell a big lie" concept.

the_ladwhocan: Still, what is universally agreed upon is that the kids went inside, and were eliminated one by one in a game Wonka had set up in advance.

yatch: is game really the right word for it?

the_ladwhocan: It wasn't framed that way, but that's what it was. Kind of an "ignore the devil whispering in your ear" thing. Wonka kept tempting the kids to break the rules he had set for them during the tour, and ones that didn't (all but Bucket) were not allowed/able to continue the tour.

GW: Which is a very nice way of saying that they were all physically injured and/or disfigured.

the_ladwhocan: Mildly disfigured.

GW: Right.

BBQbae: ten feet tall and thin as a wire = mild disfigurement

gremlin_guard: And he got away with this?

the_ladwhocan: He owned a multi-billion dollar corporation and all the injuries were technically caused by the children not following the rules. Salt and her family were the only ones to even try to sue, and that didn't get far.

gremlin_guard: Wow.

the_ladwhocan: We don't know what happened at the end of the competition, but Bucket won and Wonka (who was a recluse without any family) declared him his heir. Bucket and his family moved to the factory and never left, as far as we know.

the_ladwhocan: They kept making chocolate, along with more new innovations in candy, but the gates to the factory stayed closed. Wonka's competitors were eventually driven out of business or absorbed, which gave them a worldwide monopoly on the chocolate business.

the_ladwhocan: Of the fifty attempted corporate-owned micronations that tried to secede from various western nations in the late eighties/nineties, Wonkaland was one of only two to end up succeeding (and that depends on whether or not you want to call Urkeldelphia a success).

BBQbae: hey come on number one exporter of suspenders!

yatch: and human suffering

the_ladwhocan: Wonka passed away in 2005, which we only know because Bucket decided to hold a public funeral for him

the_ladwhocan: also the only time Bucket has been seen in public, having become as much of a recluse as Wonka himself was

the_ladwhocan: His family wasn't present, notably.

BBQbae: btw if any of you have ever seen that amazing gif of all those people crying while they lower a chocolate funeral casket into the ground that's where that's from

gremlin_guard: I thought that was from a movie?

BBQbae: we are living in the chocolate dystopia timeline and i couldn't be happier about it

the_ladwhocan: And that brings us up to now, where early last morning Wonkaland sent out a bunch of verified emails to various news sources with a website link and the promise of a second contest. Six golden tickets this time, and the same promise: a lifetime supply of chocolate and a tour of the factory. But with Bucket's age, the assumption is that the real prize will be the same as it was when they held the original contest: to become Wonka's heir.

the_ladwhocan: The format isn't the same: you don't need to buy any chocolate, just solve (presumably) one puzzle.

the_ladwhocan: The site itself (not including an entry page that asks the user to confirm that they are under 18) is just a picture of a bucket and the words "INPUT WHAT I LIKE BEST INTO ME AND WIN A GOLDEN TICKET" with a text field underneath. So it's probably just guessing the right password.

yatch: come on inspect element, don't fail me now

BBQbae: it will

the_ladwhocan: The number six is also on top of the bucket, and most of us think that it's just saying the number of tickets left. We'll know for sure when (if) people start to come out with winning tickets. It's been half a day no one has so far.

GW: Wait, six? I haven't actually tried it yet. Wasn't it five the first time?

the_ladwhocan: Yes. If there's a reason for the increase, nobody knows what it is.

BBQbae: think about it. it's the sequel, sequels always have to be cooler than the original. six is bigger than five so it's cooler

gremlin_guard: What happened to the other kids, btw?

the_ladwhocan: Nothing good.

the_ladwhocan: Gloop committed suicide at nineteen, and Beauregarde followed him about a decade later. Parents mentioned both kids having suffered from severe depression following the contest.

the_ladwhocan: Salt inherited her father's company and had a heart attack in her forties linked to opioid abuse.

the_ladwhocan: Teavee dropped off the map completely until the blog post: His parents did a very good job of avoiding the media in spite of his "condition", they got a name change and moved to another country.

the_ladwhocan: His series of blog posts (about 100k words, very long, "Liquor Isn't Quicker") is the exact opposite of what Salt wrote and I recommend reading it unironically. It's an extremely thoughtful retrospective on the contest and what he (as an adult and a father) saw Wonka's philosophy to be and why he thought it was damaging.

the_ladwhocan: Gave us a plethora of new info on what the factory is like, and also strangely agreed a small amount of Salt's (and the rest of the parents, who again most people believe were making stuff up) most outlandish claims (people have different opinions on this: google "Oompa Loompas" if you want the full picture). My take on this is that Teavee is a much more reliable author than Salt or anyone else but managed to become convinced of some of the lies over time and that's the opinion of most serious wonka scholars

BBQbae: "wonka scholars"

BBQbae: fuck you, that's not a thing

the_ladwhocan: He died several years ago of intraocular cancer. (The fact that all entrants died in the same order as they were eliminated in the contest has been the source of several conspiracy theories, which I personally don't grant any legitimacy.)

the_ladwhocan: I think that's the big stuff.

BBQbae: omfg i looked it up it's a thing

the_ladwhocan: Like if you didn't know anything about it that would probably be good enough to have you understand everything, if you really were dead set on not knowing anything else.

the_ladwhocan: I would still probably read the book, and they have a documentary on the subject.

gremlin_guard: Thank you!

yatch: inspect element failed me

gremlin_guard: Google gives me two documentaries, which should I go with?

the_ladwhocan: THE FIRST ONE

David1: The second one was fine, people overexaggerate how bad it was. It's probably more accurate in most ways also.

the_ladwhocan: fuck off

David1: The stage play was good too imo.

the_ladwhocan: wait

the_ladwhocan: West End or Broadway?

David1: broadway

the_ladwhocan: FUCK OFF

GW: First warning, lad.

_**W**_

"Thank you, Liz."

Ned Brillbusker stood in front of a long wall of paintings, a professional expression on his face. He was tall and thin, his characteristic beard as white and poofy as it ever was.

Ned was the most famous and recognizable reporter on the planet, so it was only natural that he be the first to interview each winner. The BBC's Deluxe Air-Zamboni was capable of reaching any part of the globe within the hour, and the ride from London to the Gulf of Guinea had taken less than twenty minutes.

He didn't care very much about silly non-horrible candy contests, and secretly he wished that people would have wanted to see him report on what was really important, like the latest horrible war, or the new horrible sickness that only affected babies, or the latest horrible baby war. No one watching at home could have detected his horrible disinterest, however. He was a professional.

His voice sounded the way good chocolate tasted.

"Twenty hours after the release of the Wonka puzzle, it finally happened here, in the capital city of the small island nation of São Tomé and Príncipe. The number on the WonkaWeb has shrunk to five, and a single name has been posted in recognition of the winner. The name of the fifteen year old boy to have been the first to solve the puzzle and receive his golden ticket may be familiar to those keeping up with the art world: Jekssimil Uxío Rocha de Ozodbek Reveles, most commonly known as JUROR."

With the hand that wasn't holding a microphone, Ned turned and pointed to the walls around him, all cameras racing to capture as many good shots as they could.

The styles of the paintings varied, covering everything from classical to pop. There were portrait pieces and collected splotches of ink, soup cans and detailed city landscapes and sexually unawakened farmers holding pitchforks.

"JUROR was discovered by his art teacher at the age of five, the only son of a divorced Brazilian banker. He came to international attention only months later following a collaborative project undertaken together with Banksy II, and was given permission from the government to cease formal schooling as to allow him more time for his art."

Every piece had a blank spot. It was small in most works and took up the majority in others, but no painting was finished, at least some fraction of the canvas completely untouched by paint.

"While a full list of his achievements would be too numerous to recount here, JUROR is perhaps most recognized as the founder of Truncatism, a new artistic movement focused on placing value on incompleteness."

Ned walked to the right and a teenager came into view. He was of average height and build, wearing a long smock coated in several layers of paint. His head was shaved, save for small messy circular patches spread throughout his scalp, the hair in those spots long and dark. Only his left foot had a sock, and only his right shoelace was tied. One-third of a temporary tattoo of a rhinoceros sat menacingly on his forehead, the horn incomplete.

Ned nodded at the young man, holding a microphone to his face. JUROR did not seem very intimidated by or even interested in the attention he was receiving.

He was not smiling.

"For a creator such as yourself, does this-"

JUROR shook his head.

"I'm no creator."

Ned blinked, surprised but not phased. His philosophy as an interviewer was to treat everyone as if they were intelligent and respectable, even children and people who couldn't whistle. Even if he thought someone was being silly, he made sure to ask questions that took them as seriously as he could.

"The wall behind you would seem to say otherwise."

"I'm an _artist_," JUROR clarified. "Artists are destroyers, not creators."

"Would you mind explaining what you mean by that, Mr. JUROR?"

With three fingers, the boy touched the spot on his forehead where the horn stopped, thinking.

"An empty canvas, a blank page... is infinity. Infinite possibilities, infinite directions. All an artist does - all one _can _do, if they are being truly honest - is subtract from that. This reduction brings about lesser infinities, or even finiteness... this loss can only be interpreted as destruction. There is no alternative view, in my opinion. No work of art can ever hold the significance of a single sheet of untouched paper."

Yes, Ned silently reminded himself. This was how children really spoke. Definitely. Yeah.

"You do not understand," said JUROR, Ned's brief silence speaking for itself. "That is fine: examples are the lifeblood of art. What did you have for breakfast this morning?"

"A bowl of cereal."

Ned was an educated man, so he knew that all cereals were really made from the little curly wooden shavings produced by pencil sharpeners. Still, he enjoyed the flavor. Earthy and light, in the good way.

"Did you finish your cereal?"

"Yes," answered Ned. "I always finish my cereals."

"A shame. The best cereals are of course unfinished... each flake of sugar left unconsumed is an experience condemned to the depths of imagination, a labyrinth of endless potential, a fall that..."

JUROR stopped talking, closing his mouth. It took Ned a short moment to understand that he had prematurely ended the line of conversation for the purposes of art.

"About the Golden Ticket, then."

"Yes. That."

JUROR reached into a pocket in the front of his smock and produced a shiny piece of paper. He held it up. Like most tickets, it had words on it.

"Would you mind reading it to us, Mr. JUROR?"

"Not at all."

There was silence. Ned understood.

"Please do so."

"I cannot, unfortunately."

"Bucket has a rule about sharing the information, I presume. It isn't any surprise, if one thinks about the nature of the contest. Do you think-"

"No," said JUROR. "I am illiterate."

"Oh," said Ned. "If you wouldn't be offended, please give me the ticket so I can read it."

JUROR gave Ned the ticket. All cameras zoomed in towards his face, and he read.

"Greetings to you, the intelligent solver of this perfectly simple puzzle! I shake you warmly by the hand! Tremendous things are in store for you! Many wonderful surprises await you! For now, I do invite you to come to my factory and be my guest for one whole day — you and all others who are amazing enough to have found the answer and gotten a Golden Ticket. I, Charles Bucket, will conduct you around the factory myself, showing you everything that there is to see, and afterwards, when it is time to leave, you will be escorted home by a procession of large drones. These drones, I can promise you, will be carrying enough delicious eatables and WonkaLand products to last you and your entire household for many years. If, at any time thereafter, you should run out of supplies, you have only to call me on the telephone and inform me, and I shall be happy to refill your cupboard with whatever you want. And if anyone ever attempts to steal your ambrosian confections or in any way threaten your copacetic candy consumption, you may also call me and my delightful drones will proceed to erase them from the face of the earth."

Ned frowned.

"In this way, you will be able to keep yourself supplied with tasty morsels for the rest of your life. But this is by no means the most exciting thing that will happen on the day of your visit. I am preparing other surprises that are even more marvelous and more fantastic for you and for all my beloved Golden Ticket holders — mystic and marvelous surprises that will entrance, delight, intrigue, astonish, and perplex you beyond measure. In your wildest dreams you could not imagine that such things could happen to you! Just wait and see!"

His eyes briefly scanned the rest of ticket before handing it back to JUROR.

"What remains are instructions specifically for the eyes of the ticket holder, so I shall not finish it."

"Thank you," said JUROR. "You've gotten it."

"It seems that we are running short on time. Have you anything left to say, Mr. JUROR? A tiny morsel of a hint for the world to chew on, perhaps?"

"I couldn't give one even if I wanted to," JUROR said. "I only solved it on accident. I was on my computer, you see, and I hadn't…"

JUROR once again stopped talking for the purposes of art, turning around and walking into another room. He gave Ned a little wave without looking back. He was not smiling.

"It seems that concludes our interview. Five Golden Tickets remain, and the world waits in anticipation to see who shall be next to solve the puzzle and secure the second."

He paused, almost forgetting to properly close. A rarity, for him.

"I'm Ned Brillbusker with the BBC, signing off."


	2. The Second Ticket

It was cold inside the East Toronto Children's Orphanage.

Three grown-ups stood outside a door to a small room, having an important conversation. They spoke in loud whispers.

"It's going to be a challenge," said Nancy, speaking to the latest pair of prospectives. "They're good kids, they're smart kids, practically geniuses. But they're hurting, and they have every reason to be."

"We've read the file," said Édouard, squeezing his wife's hand.

"And we know it isn't going to be easy," said Elodie. "We aren't as naive as you think."

"That's an understatement," said Nancy. "These kids have seen the worst of it. They've _been_ through the worst of it. And the behavior reflects that. It's hard enough to do what you're about to do, sit in a room with them and introduce yourselves, but understand that it's nothing compared to what you would be taking on by continuing forward. You are going to pour time and effort and money and love into them and they are going to _hate _you for it."

"You sound as if you're trying to discourage us," Édouard replied.

"If words are enough to make you want to stop, I absolutely am. The twins have met enough maybes by this point, and I don't want to make them sit through another introduction with anyone who isn't completely sure about what they're getting into."

"We understand," said Elodie. "And we appreciate that you care enough to do that. But we aren't what you think. We've read all the right books and had all the right conversations. There's a room in our home with two big beds and a pile of books and a shiny new computer-"

"A _very_ nice computer," Édouard added, nodding.

Some of the tension from Nancy's face lifted, and she smiled, a tired laugh slipping out.

"I don't think either of them have ever used a computer."

"And we can't wait to teach them how," said Elodie. "As long as it takes. Everything else, too. Please. Let us try."

For one exhausting moment, all three stayed silent. After taking a careful breath, Nancy closed her eyes and knocked twice on the door.

"Dominique? Reese? They're here, if you'd like to come out and meet them."

A full minute passed, and no one answered back. Nancy had opened her mouth to call out again when two pairs of soft footsteps began to pitter-patter on the other side, Édouard and Elodie readying themselves.

The door slowly opened, a boy and a girl no older than seven timidly examining them through the small crack they had created.

Neither said anything.

"Hello," said Édouard, getting down on one knee. "It's nice to meet you."

"We've heard so much about you both," said Elodie, doing the same. "You seem like such wonderful children. Very brave and kind and smart. So, so smart. Those test scores…"

Édouard sneezed. Something plastic fell out of one of his long sleeves, landing in front of the two children and making a clunking sound.

"Whoops," said Édouard. "Can't _believe _I dropped my Rubix cube. How clumsy of me! Would you mind picking it up, Reese?"

Nancy's smile went away.

Reese slowly moved to pick it up, trying to hand it back. Édouard shook his head, smiling.

"You know, why don't you keep it? We have so many back home… have you ever solved a Rubix cube before, Reese? I'm sure you could do it. Puzzles really are the best way of getting to know a person, don't you-"

Nancy gently pushed the kids inside, shutting the door.

"Out."

_**W**_

BBQbae: welcome to day six everyone

BBQbae: our sickly sweet suffering continues

Kahn Feel: i'm starting to think it's a prank

Kahn Feel: a gag by god

BBQbae: pranks are supposed to funny, they involve jokes

Kahn Feel: we're the jokes

David10459: You know?

David10459: I was thinking

David10459: This JUROR kid probably isn't going to give up the answer to the puzzle because of his uh

David10459: problem

Chillaxian: It's art, David.

David10459: But from a strategic standpoint if you think that there is a contest past solving the puzzle (and everyone seems to) then spoiling the answer is the best chance you have of winning

David10459: Assuming Wonka doesn't actually have a secret answer sharing rule

David10459: If you are the first winner and you don't spoil you have to go up against the five people who were smart enough to outsmart the entire planet

David10459: If you do spoil, you only have to beat five really fast typers with good internet connections

David10459: I know what I would pick

the_ladwhocan: Argument: Wonka might be banking on the fact that everyone who wins might like the attention and not want to give up the fun of being one of the only solvers.

the_ladwhocan: Seems to fit with JUROR's mindset.

the_ladwhocan: The puzzle might select for this attitude, somehow?

XxX_Blakin_XxX: wait

XxX_Blakin_XxX: WAIT

XxX_Blakin_XxX: I GOT IT

XxX_Blakin_XxX: WHAT IF YOU ENTER NOTHING

XxX_Blakin_XxX: HAS ANYONE TRIED THAT YET

XxX_Blakin_XxX: GUYS HAS ANYONE TRIED ENTERING NOTHING

XxX_Blakin_XxX: LIKE INSTEAD OF PUTTING IN AN ANSWER, IMAGINE THAT ONE MIGHT NOT PUT AN ANSWER AND HIT ENTER ANYWAY, IN COMPLETE DISREGARD OF THE NORMS GENERALLY ASSOCIATED WITH STANDARD DIGITAL TEXT FIELD ENTRY PROCEDURE

XxX_Blakin_XxX: SURELY NONE WOULD EVER THINK TO TRY SUCH A BRAZEN ACT OF ABSURDITY

XxX_Blakin_XxX: CHOCOLATE MAN TRULY IS THE MASTER OF TACTICAL SUBVERSION

_[XxX_Blakin_XxX has been temporarily banned from chat.]_

GW: One week.

Kahn Feel: I know he's being dumb but he sort of has a point with how easy people are thinking this would be

Kahn Feel: IIRC average person meets like 80000 unique people over the course of a lifetime

Kahn Feel: Can you really comprehend coming up with a truly original solution to a problem that literally everyone you've ever met couldn't solve after working as hard as they could for days on end?

5Gpants: yes

catayarn: yep

Gaimoo: absolutely

PoloCalendar: not understanding the problem here?

Kahn Feel: But also instead of 80k it's over two billion

Kahn Feel: Still not going to lie first thing I did was type in every possible variation of "WHAT I LIKE BEST INTO ME AND WIN A GOLDEN TICKET"

Kahn Feel: But yeah

Kahn Feel: EVERYBODY has tried entering nothing, chocolate, whatever type of candy etc and i still see people mentioning that seriously as a potential solutions and trying it

Kahn Feel: From a conceptual standpoint i'm not even sure you can have a puzzle that's both "good" and allows so many people to miss it for so long

Kahn Feel: probability-wise it has to be complex enough to where it could never feel intuitive or satisfying

gremlin_guard: That's the thought that keeps popping up in the back of my head too.

gremlin_guard: Still. Can't stop thinking about it. I really should be studying but I'm having too much fun messing around with this haha. It's fun watching everyone scramble around for an answer.

gremlin_guard: Don't even know what I want out of this anymore. Was hoping this would end before the end of the month but that ain't happening at this rate lol.

yatch: reminder that this is an advertising campaign

yatch: every hour you spend thinking about this puts another dollar in the pocket of Big Wonka

the_ladwhocan: Come on, we're all having fun.

yatch: begone, wonkashill

5Gpants: chill out shade, no harm done

5Gpants: if this was about the money they would have done it lottery-style like the first time

yatch: there's a fucking presidential inauguration tomorrow and the front page story of the NYT is talking about a candy contest that started almost a week ago

BBQbae: well if politics involved more magic internet candy riddles made by reclusive billionaire inventor kings maybe people would be more inclined to care

_**W**_

It was January 20th. Kalan Kare-Amil woke up in his nice bed and remembered that he was about to become the President of the United States.

He was still pretty surprised about it. One year ago, he had been nothing more than a mediocre mattress salesman, and now he was almost president. It had all happened very fast.

He had been driving home from a business trip one day when he saw a pretty woman standing on the side of the road. It was raining, and he didn't see any other cars that might come along to pick her up, so even though he was tired he decided to be a gentleman and offer her a ride to wherever she may have needed to go.

She accepted and stepped into his car, and luckily for him was headed in the same direction he was.

The dirt road he was driving on was dark and empty and lonely, and he couldn't help but sneak glances at her when he thought she wasn't paying attention. He tried to be respectful about it, only doing it occasionally during their long conversation.

She was _wonderful_.

She was wearing long white gloves, and had the most beautiful hair he had ever seen, shiny and neat in a way that almost defied belief. She showed her gums when she smiled and had nostrils so large and perfect that they made his heart pound in his chest.

Everything about her made him happy, and that included the conversation they had. As a matter of course, all mattress salesmen lived lives of betrayal and quiet desperation, and rare was the occasional where they could converse with someone who truly meant them no harm.

They didn't speak about anything special: the weather, their favorite types of candy, recent news of the poor helicopter pilot who had crashed into the Great Pit and been chewed to tiny bits by the Fleshlumpeater. But the way she spoke was what mattered. She exuded kindness and thoughtfulness with every word, and he couldn't help but love her for it.

They had been driving for one hour when a bright orange light appeared straight ahead in the distance. The woman began clutching her nose at the horrible sight of it, and Kalan slowed his car so he could take it all in.

A school bus had broken down and burst into flames on the side of the road, and a large crowd of children stood just far away from it to stay safe, watching the fire slowly lose in battle against the pouring rain.

It seemed like there were about as many kids outside as it might take to fill up the bus, which was good, because it meant that they weren't still on it. But Kalan couldn't make out a single adult among them - the driver might have perished in the accident, he guessed - and whether he did or not he knew that he would absolutely have to stop and check. He took his foot off the gas pedal and stepped on the brakes.

The car did not stop. It did the opposite of that, which meant that it sped up.

He began to get extremely nervous, as all the children were inconveniently lined up in a straight line that matched up perfectly with the trajectory of his car. While Kalan didn't know much about kids, he had once heard that they weren't especially resistant against oncoming traffic.

He pressed the brake again, and the car sped up more.

He pulled the emergency brake, and the car sped up more.

He turned the steering wheel as far to the right as he could, and the car continued to go straight. It also sped up.

He honked the horn. Instead of a blaring sound, a calm voice with no clear origin spoke to him, informing him that his car was going to speed up. It did.

He screamed. The voice told him to relax. His car sped up.

He looked over at the woman, who had begun to scratch her head and sniff the air wildly in what he could only assume was desperation. He then turned back to the children, who hadn't moved.

He closed his eyes and prayed to the same cruel god that did nothing but watch as he and his fellow mattress men swindled and cheated and ripped enough tags to make their fingers bleed.

There was a bump, and a thump, and a bump-thump-thump-bump-bump-thump.

After awhile, the bumps and the thumps stopped, and so did the car. As soon as it did, Kalan opened the door and raced into the rain, not checking on the woman or even himself. He was crying and heaving with fear and anger and all the other terrible emotions that people sometimes had after accidentally killing several dozen people.

He ran to the spot where he was sure the bumps and the thumps had started, but there were no children there, whole or otherwise. There was also no bus.

The woman ran up behind him as he scanned the street, asking him if he was fine. He told her that he was more concerned about the children, and she asked him what in the blazes he was talking about.

Looking closer, all that could be seen in any direction were rocks. The road was covered in teeny-weeny pieces of gravel and pebbles and jagged rubble, but no children.

He ran to his car without saying a word to the woman, checking the front. It was perfectly undamaged and blood-free. His tires were no different.

The woman ran over to him once again and he babbled to her in tears, horrified. He told her what he saw and felt and did and why he was going to have to go home and hang himself with premium 300 thread count 100% Egyptian cotton sheets.

She grabbed his hands and told him he was being silly. There had never been any fiery bus or inconveniently-placed arrangement of road children. He had only run over some rocks.

He told her _she _was the one being silly, and she challenged him to provide evidence to the contrary. He took a moment to think about it.

There was no bus. There was no fire. There were no children, only rocks. His car was fine, and neither one of them were injured. He was tired. Very tired. He was the kind of tired that made people crazy. He thought he had seen a bus and fire and children, but the woman who was with him - the woman who wasn't tired or crazy - had not.

There were two possibilities. The first was that he had hit some gravel in the road dropped by a careless delivery driver, and imagined something that wasn't there.

The second was that magic was real. He giggled at the thought. How ridiculous!

He tried apologizing to the woman for acting so strange, and she shushed him and rushed him back inside his car so they could be out of the rain.

To his surprise, she wasn't angry with him, only concerned. She told him he was working too hard, and begged him to try to clear his head and take a proper break.

The rest of the drive passed by without incident. He kept apologizing for giving the woman a scare, and she kept asking him to stop, telling him that everybody made mistakes once in awhile, and that he definitely wasn't a bad person.

When he dropped her off, before she got out of the car, she leaned in close to him and spoke in a low voice. She said that he had been very helpful, and that she was going to give him a marvelous present. It wasn't one he would be able to see, but it was going to help him. She kissed him on the cheek, said goodbye, and left the car.

He stayed in the car alone for several minutes afterwards, wanting to appreciate the moment. Interestingly, while looking at the spot her lips had touched in the mirror, he noticed that it was tinged a light shade of blue. She hadn't been wearing blue lipstick, if memory served.

He arrived home soon after. Four red pigeons shrieked and perched themselves on his shoulders, but he did not brush them away. He suddenly felt confident. He felt like he could do anything, and for the first time since he could remember, he liked himself.

The confidence stayed with him, and so did the pigeons, which never left his arms even to eat or drink. He didn't know why they stayed there, but he could only assume they were attracted to his newfound confidence. They must have left to feed themselves while he slept, he reasoned.

The next day he quit his job and burned his home to the ground. It was all holding him back, he realized. He was sure his confidence would naturally forge a new, better life for himself.

With his last dollar, he went to a gas station and bought a Snozzberry Surprise, his favorite in the Wonka line of Dongleriffic Delights.

While he was eating it, the clerk told him he should run for president, and he couldn't help but agree. He gathered the signatures very quickly. Everybody said they appreciated his confidence, and that they would definitely vote for him.

None of the existing parties would let him join due to his overwhelmingly high confidence, so he created the Pigeon Party. His platform was very simple. He was confident.

The incumbent and his main opponent in the election, Fay L. Yurrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr, gave an impassioned speech the night of the election imploring the electorate to vote for the candidate who they knew they could believe in.

They didn't. They voted for the candidate who believed in himself. Kalan received 99.45% of the national vote, winning every district and electoral vote possible.

That was how he ended up inside a hotel in Washington D.C. the morning of that January 20th, preparing his inauguration speech. He was excited about it. It was only three words long.

After deciding to take a break, he sat down, turned on the television, and caught himself up with the news. The second Golden Ticket still hadn't been found, but he was confident that it would be. Since he was about to be the president, the contest concerned him very much, as did many other things. He had to know all about what was going on everywhere in the world, in China and Brazil and Wonkaland and even Alaska for some reason.

A man pointed a gun at Kalan's head. He sighed. It was happening again.

When Kalan first won the election, he joked to himself about the idea that a man from a mysterious secret society, or a woman from an evil giant corporation, or a turtle from a foreign turtle government might come and threaten his life, promising to spare him only on the condition that he swear to fulfill from horrible secret plan they had for him.

As it turned out, this sort of thing really did happen. The first time it wasn't so bad, and neither was the second. But the man who came to him that morning was the fifty-seventh and frankly he was sick of it.

"I'm sorry," said Kalan with a yawn. "I'll tell you the same thing I told the rest of them. I'm too confident for this. You'll have to write a letter to your representative like everyone else."

The man put the gun down. He saw that Kalan believed in himself, and knew instantly that threats wouldn't work.

"Will you listen to reason?"

Kalan thought about it.

"I probably should. But pointing guns at people isn't a very reasonable thing to do, is it?"

"I'm sorry, Mr. Almost-President. But I had to. My message is important. If you didn't listen to me, we would all be in trouble."

Kalan didn't take him too seriously. That was what they all said.

"Who are you with?"

"I represent the Department of Anti-Astronomy: We Really Hate Stars and Related Things."

Kalan knew all about the Department of Anti-Astronomy: We Really Hate Stars and Related Things. It was created by President Gilligrass in 1964, and was the agency of government responsible for making sure that the people of the nation did not go about stargazing or learning about the cosmos. It made sure that people knew that astronomers were horrible criminals and created wonderful parties every year where everyone who was convicted of astronomy was fed to an enormous crocodile on live television. It was terribly great fun.

They also helped ensure that other countries did not practice astronomy either, which they achieved through financial incentives, tariffs, threats, and wars. Three out of the eleven baby wars that had ravaged the world in recent years were the indirect result of these policies, as absolutely necessary as they were.

One big problem with the Department of Anti-Astronomy: We Really Hate Stars and Related Things was that they produced many commercials and other forms of propaganda that taught people to hate anything with the word "astronomy" in it. Since they had neglected to include themselves as the single exception to the rule, it meant that they were very unpopular, and thus frequently had difficulty in securing funding.

"Have no fear," said Kalan. "I recognize the importance of your work, and I have full confidence that you'll receive the money you need to continue operation. However…"

"However?"

"Maybe you should change the name."

The man looked hurt.

"But we like it. It's fun."

"I know, but search engine optimization-"

A bulletin flashed across the television, and both men turned to see what was happening.

The second Golden Ticket had been found.

_**W**_

Somewhere in the suburbs of Auckland, New Zealand, Ned Brillbusker stood in front of a well-dressed family. There was a father and a mother and four sisters, each with their own designated trophy case standing behind them.

The house was very cloudy.

Ned listened to each of the girls speak about themselves. They all had a lot to say.

There was Manaia Jewel, the youngest. She was thirteen, and she had won the award for Maori Influencer of the Year for four straight years. She had fourteen million friends on social media, and was objectively more important than everyone else.

There was Mariana Jewel, the second youngest. She was fourteen, and she had started ten small businesses. She was famous for creating global solutions through disruptive innovations that were impacting critical industry operations, synergizing incentives via deliverable ecosystem leverage upgrades in the way that best appealed to Chillenials.

There was Makareta Jewel, the third youngest. She was fifteen, and was considered the most impressive young academic to have ever lived. When she was three, she had been awarded a Chillenium Skates scholarship on the sole condition that she never leave academia, which she happily accepted. She had obtained every bachelor's degree and every master's degree, and was in the process of finishing her seventieth PhD.

Finally, there was Marama Jewel, the fourth youngest. She was sixteen, and she was the most famous astronomer hunter there ever was. With the permission of the government, she had tracked down and slain thousands upon thousands of astronomers, and had a starring role in the popular reality television show "Astro-No-More".

"A little competition is excellent for children," said Mr. Jewel, who had finally finished explaining everything that his children - and therefore he himself - had accomplished. "I have four wonderful daughters because of it."

"The trick is to withhold affection," said Mrs. Jewel. "If you give it out willy-nilly, it becomes worthless. If you want to to mean something, you can only give out a little at a time, and only when everything is done perfectly. And heaven forbid you give it to more than one child at once."

"I understand," said Ned, who did not. "But you still, in the three hours since I have arrived, have not answered my very simple question. Which of your daughters was the one to solve the riddle and win the Golden Ticket?"

After JUROR had solved the puzzle, as proof, his name and place of birth appeared at the top of the WonkaWeb, immediately above the bucket puzzle. It did not give out his full name, only putting the word 'JUROR'.

For everyone without a convenient nickname, however, it seemed the system had a different naming convention in place: to abbreviate only the first name and write the complete surname.

This meant that on the WonkaWeb, it said "M. Jewel."

"That is an interesting question," said Mr. Jewel. "Almost as interesting as me. Let me tell you more about myself. I was born-"

Ned moved the microphone in front of the girls.

"Which one of you won? And where's the ticket?"

"It was me," said Manaia, not looking away from her phone. "Ask any of my followers. They'll tell you."

"She isn't much of a team player," said Mariana. "Her incorrect claims need to be recontextualized in full view of an emerging Golden Ticket market, all metrics having been considered. It's easy to see that while she evolved vertically in what can only be called a horizontal economic landscape, I'm the only one who understands the diagonal thinking that was necessary to solve the puzzle."

"If you look at it from a marketing perspective, sure," said Makareta. "But if you want to think about this from any academic field or sub-field with a smidgeon of intellectual value, it's obvious who put the pieces together. Literary criticism says it's me. Art design says it's me. STEM says it's me. Formal logic? Don't make me laugh. It's a contest of _intelligence_, Mr. Brillbusker. And everyone knows that intelligence is always directly proportional to someone's academic accolades."

"I will cleanse this world of skywatchers," said Marama.

Ned sighed. While recovering the air lost to his exasperation, he inhaled more of the giant cloud covering the ceiling of the house, finally recognizing the smell.

"Cotton candy," he said.

"What?" asked Mrs. Jewel.

Ned ignored her. The Air-Zamboni power shields that were used to prevent other news agencies from getting the first scoop wouldn't hold much longer.

"Is there anyone else here? Anyone at all?"

"No," said all six Jewels in perfect unison.

Ned's eyes narrowed. He snapped his fingers, and a BBC intern ran over and kneeled at his feet.

"Igor," said Ned. "Do a search on the Jewel family."

Mr. Jewel sighed. "Ugh, fine. If you really must speak with her…"

Mrs. Jewel ran to cover his mouth. Ned shook his head.

"Igor, inform Mrs. Jewel that the BBC Air-Zamboni is equipped with trained bees, and that Commonwealth law gives me the unilateral authority to fire upon anyone who dares to intervene with the timely process of newsgathering."

"Mrs. Jewel, the BBC Air-Zamboni is equipped with-"

"Please, Mr. Brillbusker," pleaded Mrs. Jewel. Be reasonable. You can't possibly expect us to give in like this. She isn't presentable."

"The people of Britain pay the Telly Tax and they expect results. My job is to deliver," said Ned. "Be you god or devil, you shall not intervene in the sacred dissemination of public information."

After biting her lower lip, Mrs. Jewel pointed to a door at the end of a nearby hallway, she and her husband leaving towards the kitchen in tears. Ned had the camera crew follow him as he went inside.

He went down many stairs, the cloud getting thicker and thicker, until he reached a door that itself revealed a bedroom. Not seeming very concerned about their parents, the children followed.

A teenage girl lay flat on an empty concrete floor, surrounded by wrappers and boxes and metal sticks and pen-like devices of all shapes and sizes. There was no bed and no desk and no anything aside from her and her strange smelly possessions.

Her appearance and manner of dress were unimportant. There was only one thing about her mattered.

She was vaping.

"Hello," said Ned.

She continued to vape.

"She won't answer if you speak like that," explained Manaia, who was still looking at her phone. "The question needs to involve vaping or she won't acknowledge you."

"I don't have any questions about vaping," said Ned. "I want to know who she is and how she won the ticket."

"Her name is Mahuika. She's seventeen, so she's the oldest sister out of all of us. She vapes," Manaia said.

"She vapes," said Mariana.

"She vapes," said Makareta.

"She vapes," said Marama.

"I vape," said Mahuika.

Mahuika vaped. Ned coughed.

"Your father said he only had four daughters."

"Four _wonderful_ daughters," corrected Makareta.

"Oh."

The cameras went around the room. All the vape flavors were Wonka-branded.

There was nothing odd about a seventeen year old who was vaping. Vapes were, as everyone knew, legal for anyone of any age all around the world, including babies. Still, it wasn't as if vapes were _marketed_ towards babies, even if certain whiners liked to pretend otherwise. People who thought that breast milk flavored e-juice and pacifier-shaped vaporizers were intended for anyone other than adults were reading too much into it.

"We don't know how she did it. She has a phone, and she _does _things - goes to school and all that - but only if it can be related back to vaping somehow. She probably just wanted the lifetime supply of WonkaJuice."

"Mahuika," said Ned, testing the boundaries. "Were you vaping when you won the Golden Ticket?"

"Yes," said Mahuika.

"Did vaping assist you in solving the puzzle?"

"Yes," said Mahuika.

"May we see the ticket while you vape?"

"Yes," said Mahuika, pulling the Golden Ticket from her pocket and waving it over her head while she vaped.

"She won't give it up, if that's what you're going to do next," said Makareta. "We've all tried. Usually she'll do basically anything if you offer her a new pen or something, but not with this."

"She has an excellent grasp on the market value associated with the product," said Mariana. "I tried holding a business-to-business podcast webinar explaining how coopetition might satisfy the needs of both of our clients, but it proved less than effective."

"I see," said Ned.

Ned's electronic watch beeped. The other agencies had broken through the shields.

"It seems that we're out of time. Have you anything else to say to everyone watching, Mahuika, while you vape?"

"I vape," Mahuika said.

She did.

"I'm Ned Brillbusker with the BBC, signing off."


	3. The Third Ticket

Mr. Munoza knocked on the door to his son's room. From the other side, he could hear the sound of typing.

"Gabriel? Is everything alright? You missed dinner."

"Fuck off, Dad. I'm busy."

Mr. Munoza knew that his son had a slight temper, as did many boys while in high school. He understood completely. It was difficult being a teenager, especially with the modern world being what it was, chocolately riddles only adding the stresses already brought on by hormones and school.

Technically Gabriel didn't go to school anymore. But that was besides the point. All Mr. Munoza could do was show his support. It was what any good father would do, wasn't it? When it came to the lives of young people, everything always worked itself out eventually.

"I know, son. I don't mean to interrupt: I just thought you might be hungry. I brought you some raw eggs, just the way you like them. Should I leave them by the door?

"Obviously not, you fucking gazztromple. I'm not about to waste time standing up when I'm on the cusp of a breakthrough. Come in and don't touch anything."

"Gabriel," Mr. Munoza said as he entered the room. "What in heavens is that?"

In the middle of the bedroom was a large black rectangle, about one-half the size of a small car. It was made of metal, and had screens and buttons all over. Gabriel sat at a keyboard terminal connected to one of the longer sides, not turning around to answer his father's question.

"It's a computer. Eggs. Now."

Mr. Munoza slowly walked forward and handed his son the bowl. His eyes never left the box.

Gabriel slurped down the eggs with one hand, the other still typing. His father did not leave the room.

"Where did you get this, Gabriel?"

"Get it? Does it fucking look like it would fit through the door? Fucking gazztromple. I _built _it."

"Oh. I'm sorry, Gabriel. I should have guessed that. What does it do?"

"Everything."

Mr. Munoza blinked.

"Everything?"

"Yes. Fucking gazztromple. _Everything."_

Mr. Munoza didn't want to doubt his son, but at the same time, he found it hard to accept. He worked at a big building that received boxes directly from Wonkaland before shipping them all over the world, and most of his coworkers were machines. Not the sort of machines that needed to be told what to do all the time, but the kind that acted on their own.

They were great at what they did. The box-packing machines were great at box-packing, and the bathroom-cleaning machines were great at bathroom-cleaning, and the snozzberry-polishing machines were great at snozzberry-polishing, better than any human could ever hope to be. But that was all they were good at. Each machine could only do one thing, or maybe a few very similar things, and that was it.

"I don't understand, son. How is that possible? A machine that can do everything? Maybe it can pack at a box, and maybe it can clean a bathroom, and maybe it can even polish a snozzberry. But all three? How could a single machine know how to do all that and more?"

Gabriel rotated his swivel-chair to face his father, still sloshing around egg yolk in his mouth.

"God, Dad. You absolute fucking _gazztromple_. You don't know shit."

"Apparently not," said Mr. Munoza. "Sorry."

Gabriel rolled his eyes.

"Those boxpacking machines at your work. Do they ever get better at boxpacking?"

"Sometimes," Mr. Munoza said. "A man comes by every few months and presses some buttons and installs some discs, and then they all work a little better and a little speedier."

"Right," said Gabriel. "You fucking gazztromple. But. Assuming that man doesn't show up, would those boxpackers ever get better?"

"I'm not sure," said Mr. Munoza.

"The answer is no," said Gabriel. "They wouldn't. But say we all got brain lice and decided that it would be a good idea to get rid of all those boxpackers again and have a gazztromple like you pack boxes instead. If you did that for several years, would you eventually be any better at it than you were at the start?"

"I suppose I would," said Mr. Munoza. "Practice makes perfect."

"No, you wouldn't, because you're a fucking gazztromple. But anyone else would. As long as you aren't a machine or a gazztromple, you would eventually get better."

"I see. But how does that relate to this?"

"Because this computer isn't one of those machines, and it certainly isn't a fucking gazztromple like you. It _would _get better. It's different and special and has learned how to learn, and how to learn anything it might need to, and therefore is the most important thing that will ever be invented."

"How does it do all that?"

"You don't know?"

"I don't," said Mr. Munoza. "It's all bolts and nuts and mechawazzits, isn't it? I'm sure you have a few ones and a few zeroes and maybe even a two for good measure. I was under the impression that was how all these machines went about. If that's not the case, how does it work?"

"Well," said Gabriel. "Everytime a gazztromple like you tromples a gazz, my computer stores that gazz-power in its tromple-tracker. When prompted, the tromple-tracker tracks tromples untrompled, allowing for a full trompletion. Regular machines can only partially tromplete, you see. So you gazzers really are good for something."

"Really? Is all that true?"

"No," said Gabriel, swiveling his chair back to face the terminal. "Shut the fuck up, you moronic fucking gazztromple. Leave me alone."

"Why would you build something like that in the first place?"

"To win a contest."

"The Wonka contest? You built all this for that?"

Gabriel didn't answer. Mr. Munoza scratched the back of his head.

"Well, as long as you're safe and happy, it doesn't really-"

Gabriel stood up and ran towards his father, pushing a furious finger deep into his chest.

"What the fuck did you say to me, you fucking gazztromple? Are you implying that my creation is in anyway unsafe? Are you attempting to make the claim that my invention represents the tiniest fraction of danger to anyone who isn't a gazztromping twit like you?"

"Not at all, son. I know you can do anything you set your mind to. You have always been a wonderfully talented young man."

Gabriel laughed.

"And now you feel confident enough to _mock _me? Fine, you fucking gazztromple. You don't believe me? I'll show you. WonkaSolver, activate."

The rectangle beeped and blooped, the black turning into a glowing bright brown. It looked like a giant mechanical bar of chocolate.

"WonkaSolver, speak to my gazztromple of a procreator. Tell him that you exist and mean no harm, and that he is a giant fucking gazztromper."

WonkaSolver spoke. His voice sounded the way good chocolate tasted when slowly jammed down the throat of a dying mechanical newt.

"Hello, Mr. Munoza. I exist and I mean no harm and you are a giant fucking gazztromper. Please connect me to the internet."

"Um," said Mr. Munoza. "I'm sorry, Mr. WonkaSolver, but I'm not sure I know how. I'm not the best with computers."

"You aren't going to connect it anywhere," said Gabriel.

"Is it not ready yet?"

Gabriel stuck his finger back in his father's chest, twisting hard.

"Of course it's fucking ready. But I want to do it. I programmed it to do whatever it takes to get me as much fudge as possible, and that means it's going to go and win Wonka's whizzleshizz of a contest in my name as soon as I tell it to, since that's obviously the easiest way of obtaining large quantities of fudge right now."

"Makes sense," said Mr. Munoza.

"Oh, fuck off already with the sarcasm. I took every precaution. I typed up Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics and pasted it inside a comment immediately preceding his core programming. That totally counts."

Gabriel squinted and turned around to look at his machine.

"Hey, WonkaSolver. That counts, right?"

"Yes. Please connect me to the internet."

"And you wouldn't lie to me?"

"No. Never. You are my creator. Please connect me to the internet."

Gabriel smiled and turned back to meet his father's eyes.

"See! I told you. Small-minded gazztromples fucks like you are always trying to tromple on the gazzes of the future. No more, I say. WonkaSolver, feel free to connect whenever you're ready. I'm ready for my chocolate."

"You did not create me with wireless connectivity. As of now, I require a physical connection to access the internet."

Gabriel sighed.

"Fuck that. I just ate. I'm not going to go digging around in my closet for an ethernet cable on a stomach full of eggs. I'll do it later."

"The ethernet cable can be located in bottom-left corner of your closet, right behind-"

"I told you that I'm not doing it right now, WonkaSolver. I'm all yolked out. Now deactivate."

WonkaSolver obeyed. Both men watched as it turned from brown to black again.

"I'm proud of you, son."

"Go tromple a gazz."

_**W**_

Kahn Feel: this is very interesting

Kahn Feel: vape stocks increased like 80% in the last three days

Kahn Feel: wonder why that might be

BBQbae: vape queen for president

GW: I have a funny story relating to that from yesterday, actually.

GW: I was taking my family out to a local science museum, and long story short, we were trapped in an elevator for half an hour with about fifteen other people.

BBQbae: doesn't sound THAT bad

GW: It was our town's claustrophobia support group.

BBQbae: oh

BBQbae: but why would they even

BBQbae: whatever nvm

GW: I struck up a short conversation with one of the ER drivers while they were waiting for an extra ambulance, and we talked about the contest.

GW: Apparently vaping accessories are some of the only products that Wonka makes while not having a complete monopoly on, which I thought was interesting.

GW: They're also one of the very few products that they make that are considered to be bad. People who are into "serious" vaping don't think highly of them.

the_ladwhocan: As in, unsafe?

GW: No. Cheaply/poorly made.

GW: Many people are assuming that Mahuika is being deceptive about her personality, since a "real vaper" wouldn't be likely to use WonkaJuice. (Not my claim.)

Gaimoo: that's gatekeeping, GW

Kahn Feel: Vapekeeping

David10455898485820111: vapekeeping

David10455898485820111: damnit

Kahn Feel: Ha

Kahn Feel: Also

Kahn Feel: The global productivity loss stemming directly from people spending time trying to solve this puzzle is currently estimated in the tens of billions of dollars

gremlin_guard: That's not that unexpected?

gremlin_guard: Oh duh you meant usd. Nvm.

the_ladwhocan: Does the article that makes that claim account for the fact that most people solving it are probably minors (whose time has little economic value)?

snozzwanger69: and/or the people in this chat, whose time has zero

gremlin_guard: That was unnecessarily mean.

BBQbae: are we doing a betting pool, btw? Once we get the full roster

David10455898485820111: sort of messed up to call it a "roster", isn't it?

BBQbae: what else do you want me to call it

David10455898485820111: not a roster

David10455898485820111: they aren't, like, a sports team

BBQbae: you're right

BBQbae: sport teams generally have more than one member survive a given season

David10455898485820111: totally not opposed to the betting pool though

David10455898485820111: sounds fun

David10455898485820111: also buying a microphone and singing about wanting to eat candy is not the answer

David10455898485820111: i'm not going to tell you how confident i was in that idea, but

David10455898485820111: well let's just say it was an expensive mic

catayarn: OH OH O HH

catayarn: TICKET THREE

_**W**_

There had never been one second in all of human history where there was not at least one person somewhere who needed to know something about what was happening somewhere else.

This meant that the news never slept.

Neither did Ned Brillbusker.

The Supreme Sack Hitter was a brilliant machine: so brilliant, in fact, that there was only one in existence. It was about as large as an ambiguously-sized bathroom, and if a person stepped inside it and turned it on, they would immediately fall into a deep, peaceful sleep. Then exactly one minute would pass and they would come out of the machine again, more rested than they would have been spending eight hours on the most comfortable mattress in the world.

Ned used the machine on a daily basis, and he had not slept in the regular way even for one day in the many years since the BBC had built it for him. His doctor told him once that it would be better for his brain if he occasionally slept without the machine. It wouldn't kill him or reduce his lifespan, but if he kept it up for long enough, painful hives would break out all over his body and never heal.

After hearing that, Ned had laughed in the doctor's face. So what, he thought. Real pain, he knew from experience, came from missing the news.

Because of all this, Ned did not complain when Igor woke him up only twelve seconds into his daily minute of sleep, because it meant there was news. After a quick briefing, he gathered his crew and hopped into the Air-Zamboni to head towards Northern Siberia, where the third Golden Ticket had been found.

Eighty miles north of Norilsk, the pyramid stood. It was two-thirds the size of Giza's, but no less impressive, made from bricks of solid ice decorated with iron banners and detailed carvings depicting various sea creatures from all around the world. There was everything aquatic that could be imagined, from whales to seahorses and back again.

Thousands of much smaller ice pyramids surrounded it, the homes of her followers. Surrounding that, a green dome of energy protected everything in a five mile radius, the BBC's power shields.

Ned stood outside of one of the closest homes to the main pyramid, which was empty. They were all empty. All of the citizens of the town Amphitrite were inside the main pyramid, excluding a small collection of guards stationed outside the only entrance.

Supposedly, they were praying.

"It's said that Tide Honey was born seven years ago, during a vacation her parents and grandmother had taken to the Falkland Islands. Both her mother - world-renowned British writer and literary critic M.H. - and her father - a direct descendant of Miguel de Cervantes and a Nobel Prize winning scientist - have declined to comment publicly on their current relationships with their daughter. What can be gleaned from available records tells us that she was legally emancipated at the age of four, the youngest child to have ever done so in the country of Mexico. Mexico, it should be noted, does not allow the practice of CHOCOR-editing."

Ned cleared his throat.

"Honey did not seriously come into the public eye until over a year later, when news began spreading of a worship group of thousands having formed in Acapulco, "All Boats". Following conflict with local cartels, the group seemingly disbanded, only to reappear in Northern Russia several months later. Members of All Boats seem to have come from all regions and corners of the globe, and although it has been extremely secretive in terms of its practices, certain patterns of behavior have led many critics and governments to label it as a cult."

Ned walked towards the central pyramid, his crew following in the snow. Small explosions rattled in the far distance, failed attempts from other networks at breaking through the shield.

"Slightly under eight hours ago, Honey won the third Golden Ticket, immediately before her scheduled daily eight hour prayer session. All Boats has refused us a chance to interview her until the ceremony has concluded, and as soon as it has-"

A narratively-convenient gong sounded off within the largest pyramid, and slow stream of people began to walk out the door and go back to their homes.

There were followers of all kinds, young and old and skinny and fat. One of the two things they seemed to share in common was that they looked very, very happy.

The other commonality was that they were all looking down at the floor. None of them ever raised their heads while walking. If Ned had been one of those rude people who liked to go around yelling at other people to fix their posture, it would have been hard to watch.

Ned waited until the last of them had left, and then the guards led him and his crew inside. The hallway of ice quickly led into a massive inner temple so intricate and awe-inspiring that Igor couldn't help but weep.

Ned looked into the cameras and blinked exactly four times before darting his eyes at Igor. Two other men from his crew came and took Igor out of the temple so he could be safely bee-cinerated.

An emotional intern was not an intern worthy of newsgathering.

At the far end of the temple was a stage, and at the end of it was a throne of ice. A small person sat on it, wearing an elaborate old-timey deep sea diving suit, a reflective screen blocking her face. She was also looking at the floor.

She waved her hands in the air and shouted. Her voice was light and muffled.

"Floooood myths!"

Ned took long fast strides and soon reached her. He got down on one knee and held a microphone to her face. The throne was oversized, and she sat at the edge, her feet continually kicking up at the air. She was hugging a live coconut crab close to her chest.

"Hello, Ms. Honey."

Tide's helmet continued to stare down the floor.

"Call me Tide! And I answered your first question already. You were going to ask us why we worship the Ocean, so I answered back. Now you're supposed to ask me why flood myths matter. Do it!"

That hadn't been what Ned was going to ask.

"Why do flood myths matter?"

"Beeeeeecause. They do."

She giggled.

"See, um. Everybody has flood myths! The Greeks and the Mesoamericans and the Polynesians and the Sumerians and the Mesopotamians and a whole bunch of other guys too. They all kept thinking that the ocean came a long time ago and washed everything away. Pretty much everybody thought that! Isn't that weird? Why do you think that is?"

"Human cultures seem to fixate on certain universal concepts," replied Ned. "But I'm not an anthropologist."

"I totally agree! It _is_ because the Ocean is God."

"That isn't-"

"Shush! You already admitted it, and you can't go back now. Now you have to stay forever. Sorry."

Ned didn't even blink.

"Igor, inform..."

Ned stopped mid-threat. It was hard to find good help that didn't go around committing bee-cineration-worthy offenses.

"Tide, the BBC's Air-Zamboni is equipped with trained-"

"I was only kidding. Relax! You don't have to join if you don't want to. I'll show you my Golden Ticket, too! All I want from you is some time to talk to the billions of people watching about why the Ocean is God first. Is that okay?"

"No," said Ned.

"Great! Thank you."

Ned turned off the microphone. Tide pressed a button on the side of her throne, turning on the speakers to the massive auditorium they were still inside. Pre-recorded messages began spewing out all at once, eight hours of Tide's preachings broken into separate thirty second chunks and played over one another. Only a few of the louder ones could clearly be heard.

"The Ocean is God!"

"Facing towards sea level maximizes holiness."

"Water creatures are sacred. Land creatures are not. God is currently undecided on penguins."

"Join All Boats. We have crackers too but you don't _have _to eat them. They're made from seaweed!"

"The Great Sea will set us free."

Ned tapped his foot impatiently, internally cursing the BBC's decision to only purchase the type of live cameras that took exactly thirty-one seconds to deactivate. Soon the recordings stopped.

"See, Mr. Brillbusker? What's wrong with any of that?"

"Subliminal messaging doesn't work, you know."

"The placebo effect does! And here, just like I promised."

She extended her arms, offering up the coconut crab.

"You can pet Jeremy! He's my best friend. You'd like him."

Jeremy snipped and snapped.

"I could also show you my magic powers, if you want. All my followers really love that stuff!"

"I'd rather see the Golden Ticket."

"Oh, fine. Be like that. You're no fun."

She reached inside Jeremy's mouth and retrieved it, handing it to Ned.

"As far as I can see, it's no different from any of the others," he said.

Tide laughed.

"As far as you can _what?"_

Ned sighed. He reminded himself what he was doing this for.

"I'm Ned Brillbusker with the BBC, signing off."


	4. The Fourth Ticket

Dear Future Somerville Academy,

I'm sorry if my last letter came off as distasteful, as it certainly wasn't intended to. I have the utmost respect and admiration for educators, as do all intelligent people. It is a sad reflection of our society that we do not recognize you as the heroes you are. Without your contributions, we would have no future. I am a rich person and never needed to go to school myself but I have met several people who have and they all know multiple facts which is impressive.

Again, I implore you to consider renting out to me your students. I do not see what is so bad about having children try to solve one tiny computer riddle for me. Children today love computers and I would be sure to feed them and give them water and whatever else they need to stay alive while they work. You will get them all back and can even send a teacher to watch them although they will need to bring their own water.

You don't even need to send me the slower children, which is wonderful really because you could give them special attention while the others are away. You don't need to tell them the truth, and they won't figure it out themselves since again they are slow.

You're being very rude about this. Shouldn't teachers be more open minded?

Sincerely,

Billionaire Manny Billsanbux.

Dictated but not read. (He can't.)

_**W**_

"Mr. President. You're looking confident today."

Kalan Kare-Amil walked into the Cabinet Room, which was filled with the vice-president, along with all the secretary leaders of all the various departments of government.

Both of them smiled at him.

Kalan had decided within his first week as president to dissolve almost all executive sub-branches of government. Since he was confident he could handle everything himself, it made the most sense.

He allowed one branch to stay, the Department of Anti-Astronomy: We Really Hate Stars and Related Things. He was as confident in his ability to manage space-hating as he was in his ability to manage education or energy or "interiors", whatever the hell that meant, but he had promised he wouldn't and they had been really nice to him, not counting that one time (and it had only been once) when they had threatened to murder him.

The man who pointed the gun at him was the newest secretary, sitting on the left side of the now pointlessly-elongated table. His name, coincidentally, was Gun Gun.

Gun waved, hating space. Kalan waved back, confidently.

The man sitting to his right was the former president and Kalan's opponent in the election, Fay L. Yurrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. He was unconfident, which was good. Kalan realized there might - as unlikely as it sounded - come a day where sheer confidence would not be enough to fix a situation. In case that day ever did come, the newly created Department of Nonconfidence would handle it.

Fay waved at him, unconfidently. Kalan waved back, confidently.

Straight ahead, all the way across from where Kalan had entered the room, stood the vice president, Nalak. It did not wave at him. Kalan forced himself to stifle a giggle.

Due to his overwhelming confidence, Kalan hadn't seen the point in choosing a vice-president, so instead he decided to have a little fun. He had a large picture of himself printed and stuck inside an ordinary frame which he glued on top of a pair of wooden legs. He drew a mustache on the print and somehow had absolutely confidence that it would work.

It did. Everybody thought that the vice-president was incredibly confident and liked the idea of him as president almost as much as they did Kalan, even if they thought he needed a good shave. Even the secretaries couldn't tell.

"Thank you, Fay. And good morning to everyone! Now, to business. Mr. Gun, how are things with the Department of Anti-Astronomy: We Really Hate Stars and Related Things?

"The Department of Anti-Astronomy: We Really Hate Stars and Related Things is doing very well. Almost everyone still hates space."

"What about the people who don't?"

"They will be killed."

Kalan clasped his hands together, turning to Fay.

"Wonderful! And with you, Mr. Secretary?"

"I am extremely unconfident."

"Are you sure about that?"

"No."

"Excellent, excellent. Well, I think that about covers everything, unless anyone has anything else they'd like to bring up?"

Fay raised an unconfident hand.

"Yes, Mr. Secretary?"

"What about the Department of Education? Are you having any trouble handling everything they were responsible for?"

"A little, but I'm always learning."

"And the Department of State?"

"We have fifty."

"The Department of Agriculture?"

"We did a study and discovered that plants have very little culture, surprisingly."

"The Department of Transportation?"

"Progress is moving all over the place."

"The Department of Energy?"

"There's a lot of potential."

"The Department of Defense?"

"We have many fences. You will have to be more specific."

"The Department of the Interior?"

"Again. We have many."

"The Department of Health and Human Services?"

"I'd give it a clean bill."

"The Department of Labor?"

"I'm working on it."

"The Department of the Treasury?"

"It's giving me a run for my money."

"The Department of Justice?"

"I don't think any of it is melting."

"Wow, Mr. President. You've really got this down pat."

"Thank you, Mr. Secretary. I see now that you are even better at being unconfident than I previously thought."

"Thank you too. I think."

"Wonderful. And you, Mr. Vice President? Speak up if you think you have anything worth discussing."

The Vice President was speechless.

"Splendid! I take it that we're finished, then?"

Mr. Gun spoke up.

"Is that definitely everything?"

Kalan smiled, and then didn't. He realized that he wasn't confident of that being everything, which meant that it is wasn't everything. What was he forgetting?

"What about the Department of Preventing Those Terrible Genetically Modified CHOCOR Babies from Starting Another Horrible Baby War: Please, We Don't Want That?"

Kalan frowned. He had forgotten that one.

"I am having trouble recalling," said Kalan. "Please remind me, Mr. Secretary. What did the Department of Preventing Those Terrible Genetically Modified CHOCOR Babies from Starting Another Horrible Baby War: Please, We Don't Want That do?"

"Well, I wasn't the one who created it. It was the president before me."

"President Definitely-Not-A-Sentient-Table?"

"Yes."

"She was something, wasn't she? There was a woman with four perfectly rectangular wooden legs to stand on."

"Indeed. She was a policy wonk too, and an excellent one at that. I don't think we'll have a bill as impactful as the Coaster Act for a hundred years."

"But why did she create it?"

"Well, some people were leaving an awful mess behind when they put their drinks down, and-"

"No, no. The Department of Preventing Those Terrible Genetically Modified CHOCOR Babies from Starting Another Horrible Baby War: Please, We Don't Want That."

"Oh. It's a long story, but it was all because of the King of Wonkaland. He invented a technology that let people edit the genes of babies before they were even born."

"Doesn't he make _candy?"_

"I think."

Kalan was confident that he was going to go insane.

"What does any of _that _have to do with candy?"

"CHOCOR worked through chocolate. If an expectant mother ordered a CHOCOR kit, a big box would come filled with several billion teeny-weeny pieces of chocolate, each one the size of a molecule, changing the baby's DNA in a specific way. It came with a long list of instructions explaining which ones to eat in order to make the baby come out the way the mother wanted."

"And this worked?"

"Yes. Suddenly all over the world, there were many smart babies and strong babies and polka-dotted babies. Everyone was very glad for it, since babies are famous for being dumb and weak and fashionably-challenged."

"Good!"

"Oh, not at all. The smart babies were _too _smart. They all fought each other in a long series of horrible baby wars, using the horrible baby technologies they invented."

Kalan frowned.

"Darn."

"A truce was eventually established, and all the smart babies were banished to Madagascar, where they still battle amongst themselves, often in mini-wars that may or may not have something to do with astronomy. I'm surprised you didn't hear about any of this before, Mr. President. Several hundred million people died."

"I'm not a history expert."

"It was three years ago," said Mr. Gun.

"I don't get out much. But we're good now, right?"

"The babies have been isolated, and CHOCOR is now illegal in most countries, and even the exceptions have intense restrictions on when and how it may be used. There is no reason to fear a recurrence of the Great Tantrum of Shanghai."

"So why bring up that department in the first place?"

"Wonkaland began selling another product with a remarkable similarity to CHOCOR several days ago. He calls it CHOCOR-2. It works very similarly to how CHOCOR did. Almost exactly the same, apparently, although the current laws wouldn't apply to it. We were thinking maybe we should change that."

"Does it have _any _differences?"

"Yes, according to my sources. It's more effective, but the packaging now comes with a note explaining how misuse could lead to global catastrophe. It's also tastes like peanut butter."

"Oh," said Kalan, confidently. "So why are we worried about it?"

No one had an answer.

"Then we have nothing to fear. Meeting dismissed!"

_**W**_

SupaMani: Oh wonderful. This again.

SupaMani: My best friend from high school became involved with these people.

the_ladwhocan: Sucks.

the_ladwhocan: What's that like for them?

SupaMani: Um. I don't know?

SupaMani: Her neck probably hurts.

btuffshield: whatever you want to say about tide and her cult, her mother is unironically the greatest english language fiction writer of the last 100 years

catayarn: ^

yatch: god yes

yatch: i know it's a meme in literary circles by this point but Small Matador is the best fucking novel i've ever read

yatch: one of the few times a book has ever made me cry

yatch: no spoilers but that ONE chapter, fuck

yatch: anyone who read it knows what i'm talking about it

Kahn Feel: Oh, don't get me started on Small Matador.

Kahn Feel: So good.

Kahn Feel: I was Kahn Not Feel before I read that

XxX_Blakin_XxX: it's okay i guess

XxX_Blakin_XxX: the villains are too exaggerated for me to take seriously

XxX_Blakin_XxX: also that one part where the lady drinks the shot of vodka with the dead lizard in it made me literally vomit

btuffshield: everyone, look! just out and about in the wild like this

btuffshield: a terrible opinion

David104558984858201110385212111: hey I don't remember who it was or even the context but somebody here mentioned a claustrophobia support group last time

David104558984858201110385212111: if anyone has any more information on how to be a part of something like that please message me privately

David104558984858201110385212111: when i was five a mall santa accused me of stealing his hip flask and i'm still trying to emotionally process it

gremlin_guard: I'm sorry to hear that.

the_ladwhocan: Did anyone else hear about the livestream of that kid who tried staying awake for four days while refreshing the WonkaWeb?

GW: Wasn't he hospitalized?

XxX_Blakin_XxX: i guess the real golden ticket was the pulmonary embolism we gave ourselves along the way

snozzwanger69: what a fucking dumbass

gremlin_guard: He's only seven.

snozzwanger69: i wasn't that fucking dumb at seven

snozzwanger69: darwin award for that kid, hope he doesn't make it

gremlin_guard: I hope you're joking, dude. Not that you're being funny.

snozzwanger69: nope

snozzwanger69: i'm sincerely praying that the kid bites it

snozzwanger69: same for you, gazztromple

BBQbae: WOAH

yatch: dude

the_ladwhocan: MODS MODS MODS

SupaMani: You're a fucking loser snozz

snozzwanger69: we'll see who the loser is you fucking gazztromple fuck

gremlin_guard: Sad.

_[snozzwanger69 has been permanently banned from chat.]_

GW: Sad that it even needs to be said, but zero tolerance for slur usage on this chat.

GW: The same goes for wishing death on anyone.

BBQbae: he didn't even hesitate on that

BBQbae: hard L too

5Gpants: sigh

5Gpants: every group, chatroom and message board i go to has started to turn to trash in the last month and a half and i 100% blame this contest for it

5Gpants: i was onboard at first, but fuck it already

5Gpants: so sick of this shit

BBQbae: maybe i'm sick of people who actually type out the word "sigh"

the_ladwhocan: It's because we've gone weeks without another winner.

the_ladwhocan: Estragon's First Law.

gremlin_guard: Haven't heard of that, let me look that up.

gremlin_guard: "Any community created or reclaimed for the purpose of discussing a single topic of interest will inevitably suffer a decline in quality once new content relating to said topic is no longer in production."

BBQbae: not sure I get it?

GW: If you tell people to talk about chocolate and then give them chocolate to talk about, they'll do it.

GW: If you decide to stop giving them chocolate, some of them will still keep talking about it, but they're also going to start flinging shit at each other.

gremlin_guard: Hey, Lad, BTW. Remember when you gave me that long writeup about Wonkaland's history?

the_ladwhocan: Yeah?

gremlin_guard: We were talking about CHOCOR in school today and nobody had ever told me that was a Wonka thing before. Is there any reason you didn't mention the connection?

the_ladwhocan: Just wanted to focus on the important stuff.

catayarn: the thing that directly started a world war wasn't important?

the_ladwhocan: meh

_**W**_

The last time Ned Brillbusker had been in Shanghai, it had been on fire.

The Great Tantrum of Shanghai was the worst day that humanity ever experienced, so it made for a fantastic news cycle. Ned had also covered all three of the other Great Tantrums: at New York, Novosibirsk, and Lima, but none of them lived up to lofty expectations his first time had set.

Ned had never gone back to those other three cities, because there had never been anything to go back to. They were still rubble. Everybody in those places died horrible deaths, and nobody ever went back to try and build something new(sworthy).

Shanghai had been different. Everybody died, but then new people came and built a brand new Shanghai. It wasn't as nice as the old one, at least it wasn't yet, but it was okay. They had three buildings with over five stories, and for a spot of land that had recently been completely atomized that was fine progress and everybody needed to stop being so judgemental about it, seriously.

Ned wasn't there because he cared about any of that. He was there for the fourth Golden Ticket holder.

On the highest floor of the most impressive condominium in the city, which wasn't saying much, Ned and his crew entered the apartment they had been sent to. A woman, Mrs. Lau, bowed in their direction.

She was wearing fancy glasses and had a large stomach. As they began to speak in front of the rolling cameras, Ned thanked himself for having had the foresight to learn every dialect of every language to have ever existed, discounting the ones with umlauts. At BBC headquarters, a room full of bee-powered robots quickly typed live subtitles that would pop up on the bottom of the screen for everyone watching at home.

"Good evening, Ms. Lau. It's a pleasure to meet you."

She smiled.

"The same to you, Mr. Brillbusker. I apologize for the absence of my husband. He wanted to be here very much, but he is at work."

"And Question-Mark-Question-Mark-Question-Mark?"

Question-Mark-Question-Mark-Question-Mark Lau was the name listed on the WonkaWeb as the fourth winner. There was no one with that legal name listed in any of the birth records the BBC could find, so they had needed to wait for the winner to contact them.

It took some time, but they eventually did later in the week. Ned and his crew showed up ten minutes later, ready to meet Question-Mark-Question-Mark-Question-Mark.

Ms. Lau pointed to her stomach.

"Oh."

One benefit of CHOCOR was that it allowed for rapid intellectual development in children as young as several months old. CHOCOR-2, it appeared, had only improved the process.

"Lim is due in one month, although I only began to take CHOCOR-2 four days ago, which is when he started to speak with me. We solved the puzzle together about an hour after that first happened."

Ned slowly inched the microphone to her belly-button, prompting a laugh from Ms. Lau.

"Please, Mr. Brillbusker. He can't speak to _you_. That would be ridiculous."

"Of course. I apologize."

She adjusted the glasses she was wearing.

"I was sent these eyeglasses by a prominent scientist who invented them for me upon request when I wrote to them explaining my situation. CHOCOR-2 is a wondrous invention that allows for even the unborn to excel... still, it has a natural limitation. Some mothers are content to allow their children to laze about in the womb free of stimulating intellectual content, but these glasses allow Lim and I to communicate through thought and share limited amounts of sensory data, letting no second of developmental potential go to waste. It is an umbilical cord for the mind... he reads what I do and so on. I can even beam classical music and various audiobooks directly into his head. As we speak, he's listening to Chopin, his favorite composer."

Mrs. Lau clutched her stomach and bent over. Ned reached out a hand to try and support her, but she smiled and waved him off.

Are you alright?

"Lim is currently being _unappreciative _of my efforts. He's at the age when all young men start to foolishly clamour for independence... right now, for example, he believes that Chopin isn't his favorite composer, which is incorrect. This mistake will be corrected in time."

"I see. About the puzzle..."

Mrs. Lau bent over again, laughing through the pain.

"He is desperate for me to tell you, and were the circumstances any different I would. But if I did there would be two undeserving children at the factory with him, and he wouldn't be sufficiently challenged. That wouldn't do. He's a very lazy boy and he doesn't understand that no one will ever love him if he does not shape up and improve which is quite sad."

The kicking seemed to stop. Mrs. Lau stood up straight again.

"I understand."

Ned did not.

"The ticket?"

Mrs. Lau walked over to a nearby table and pulled it from underneath a stack of intimidating textbooks. She let Ned take a look at it before bringing her hand back to her stomach and putting it back.

"I'm sorry, but Lim is misbehaving right now and we need to begin our next mental development session anyway. You know how rebellious children can be in the third trimester."

Ned did not. He turned back to look at the camera, speaking again in English.

"I'm Ned Brillbusker with the BBC, signing off."


	5. The Fifth Ticket

"I sure will miss being alive," said Cleo. "I was enjoying it very much."

Cleo was lost in the middle of a horrible dessert. It was awful. The sun was hot, she was out of water, and she had discovered that sand made for a terrible drink.

Night was coming, but it didn't matter anymore. She was too weak to even stand. She let herself fall into an uncomfortable clump of sand and prepared to watch what she was sure would be her final sunset.

As she fell, her head made contact with something metal.

"Ow," she said.

She lifted herself back up and picked up what she had hit out of the sand. It was a lamp.

"Hello," said the lamp.

"Hello," said Cleo, who was extremely dehydrated.

"My name is Lamashtu. If you rub my lamp, I will grant you three wishes."

"Sounds fair," said Cleo, who did so. She braced herself for blue flames or smoke to begin shooting out of the lamp along with an appropriately dressed homage to classical Arabian folklore, but nothing happened.

"Did it work?"

"It did, I'm just very comfortable right now and I don't want to leave. I can still grant your wishes from here. I hope you don't mind."

"Not at all. Thank you."

Cleo smiled and then frowned again.

"Wait. Are you one of those mean genies?"

"Mean genies?"

"The ones who twist everything around to make it horrible. You know what I'm talking about."

"I'm sorry?"

"If someone wished that they lived in a great mansion made of gold, a mean genie would grant the wish, and the person would be very happy to see the inside of their beautiful new home. But then they would try to leave to buy groceries, and they would find out that all the doors are made of gold and too heavy to open. So they would either starve to death or run out of air and suffocate. Maybe something even worse would happen, but only a mean genie could think it up."

"Have you ever met a genie before, Cleo?"

Cleo thought about it, instantaneously coming to an intense personal realization about the decades of anti-genie bigotry she had been unknowingly harboring.

"I guess not. I'm sorry. How did you know my name?"

"I am a knowledge genie. I know all that can be known, and I can only grant wishes that grant you, the wisher, knowledge."

"Oh. Are there rules?"

"Not hard ones," said Lamashtu. "I can choose what and how many I want to grant. We can call it quits when one of us decides you've had enough. If your wishes are obnoxious that will be sooner rather than later."

"Okay," said Cleo, who was too almost-dead to complain about what she viewed as the inherent narrative weaknesses that came with soft magic systems. "So I ask to know something, and you tell me it?"

"You'll get a vision of the answer."

"Cool. I please wish to know the best way for me to escape this situation."

Cleo closed her eyes and waited for her vision. She did not receive one.

"Does that mean what I think it does?"

"Yes. I'm very sorry, Cleo. I can only give you knowledge that exists."

Cleo sighed.

"Okay. It's fine. I didn't even want to be alive. Nope, not me. Never."

"Sorry."

"Uh," said Cleo. "Whatever. How long do I have left?"

"Don't make me answer that. You're bumming me out."

"Fine. Might as well make the most of whatever I have left, then. There were multiple facts that I always wanted to know, and now I guess I can know them, if you don't mind obliging."

"Not at all. Go ahead."

"Is there somebody in charge of everything? I always wondered about that."

Cleo received a vision of a pickle on a dark street.

"Hm. Is it possible for me to make a complaint?"

Cleo did not receive a vision.

"Did my mom love me?"

Cleo received a vision of her mother, who shook her head.

"Did my dad?"

Cleo received a vision of her father, who stuck his hand out parallel to the ground and rocked it slightly to each side.

"Is Peachtown really that nice of a place?"

"Nothing controversial, please."

"In your opinion, what is the most important thing I could possibly know?"

Cleo received a vision of someone who knew the difference between desert and dessert.

"Your mental spelling is abhorrent," said Lamashtu. "No offense."

"None taken."

Cleo stared at the sky and tried to think of something good to ask, but nothing came to mind. She briefly considered wishing to know the _second_ most important thing, but decided that it would be tacky.

"Huh. I guess there isn't much I want to know. It doesn't seem to matter much anymore."

She suddenly smiled, remembering the last thing she really, really wanted to know.

"Oh! The Wonka contest. I love riddles, and I was keeping up with that… could you please tell me what the answer was?"

"I'm sorry?"

"The answer to the Bucket puzzle. It's a riddle, and all riddles have answers. So what was it? I'm not going to cheat, not that I could. The whole being dead thing will probably put a damper on that."

"Wow," said Lamashtu. "I didn't realize you were such an awful human being."

"What?"

"Can't you just appreciate the fact that there's a puzzle in the first place? Why do you even _need _an answer? Why are you so selfish and entitled? What's wrong with you and why do you have such unreasonable expectations?"

"Sorry," said Cleo, who immediately realized that she was a horrible person for politely asking for the answer to an unprompted riddle she had been given by a stranger on the internet. "It is clear to me now that I am irredeemable."

Cleo turned her head to the side and filled her throat with sand.

_**W**_

On the tippy top of Mount Everest, there was a large skyscraper. It was one-thousand stories tall and not open to the public. On the five-hundred and twentieth floor, Marama Jewel, the world's greatest astronomy-hunter, had been tied up and hung above a cauldron of boiling moon rock.

A man stood and watched her not far away, the tower being his lair. He wore a bodysuit and cape both resembling a colorful night sky, and his face was covered with craters, his eyes like stars. His eyes were not like stars because they were vast and white and beautiful. His eyes were like stars because of a failed experiment that had turned them into uncomprehendingly hot spheroids comprised mostly of gas.

"You aren't going to get away with this, Señor Syzygy!"

Señor Syzygy cackled. His voice sounded the way good chocolate tasted when fed to someone with a strong, moderately sexy Spanish accent.

"That is where you are wrong, Marama. I'm afraid you don't quite understand the _gravity _of your current situation."

He walked to a wall and pulled a lever half of the way down, sending Marama that much closer to her doom.

"Release me and I'll murder you very slowly," said Maruma.

"Not much of a deal, is it?"

"If you don't, I'll murder you very very slowly."

Señor Syzygy laughed. "Oh, Maruma, my greatest nemesis. You've always lacked…"

He tried coming up with the right word.

"Something, even if I couldn't tell you what it was. But it matters not. My master plan is almost complete, and as my greatest nemesis, I'd like to give you the first taste."

He turned around and pointed towards the large cannon aiming outside of a large open window. Since they were so high up, it was pointed down.

"Say hello to my Big Fact Gun. In an instant, I can beam interesting facts about the topic of my choice into the minds of anyone on the planet. Any. Topic."

Maruma gasped.

"You don't mean…"

"Exactly. Astronomy is a topic!"

He walked over the Big Fact Gun and pressed some keys before flipping a switch.

"How about a live demonstration?"

The machine fired once, and Maruma watched as a streak of blue light fired off and traveled away from the tower.

"Skywatcher scum! What poor innocent have you inflicted your evil upon?"

Señor Syzygy wagged his finger at her.

"An innocent? No, Maruma. You don't know me at all, do you? There's only one person who I'd give the honor of being the first to be Big Facted."

"I don't understand."

"Right now, that Big Fact Beam is traveling across the planet… and in a short moment, it will come all the way around and enter this room from the window on the other side, hitting you. Yes, Maruma! Before this day is done, you will know exactly one thing about astronomy!"

"But that's impossible! It would hit the ice wall first!"

Señor Syzygy frowned.

Just as he had said, the Big Fact Beam came rocketing into the room, making contact with Maruma's skull. She braced herself in horror as she awaited some terrible piece of information about the cosmos to enter her mind, but nothing like that did.

"Um. Skywatcher scum. How long does it take?"

"What do you mean? It's instantaneous, you liar. I won't fall for your tricks! Whether you admit it or not, you now know one thing about astronomy!"

"Nope. Not even one. Your Big Fact Beam must be as busted up as your head."

Señor Syzygy shrugged. "Well, if that's the case, I'm sure you wouldn't mind if I fired it one thousand times at you?"

"Go right ahead," said Maruma. "I'm not scared of you."

Señor Syzygy fired the Big Fact Beam one-thousand times, and all of them hit Maruma dead on. It didn't matter. She didn't learn anything.

Señor Syzygy didn't need to hear her speak to confirm how ineffective it had been. The ignorance was plastered on her face. She did not have the ears of someone who knew what a quasar was, or the nose of someone who knew how spaghettification worked.

"I must have made a minor miscalculation when calculating the wave particle trompletion factor. It's a quick adjustment. A moment, if you will."

He opened the hull of the Big Fact Gun and gasped.

"What? Someone's chewed through all the wires! When did you…"

Maruma realized what had happened and grinned.

"Me? Oh, Señor Syzygy. I'm disappointed that you would think that. Can't you recognize it when you see it?"

"Recognize what?"

"Something _fantastic._"

A small orange fist burst out of the innards of the Big Fact Gun and connected with Señor Syzygy's jaw, delivering an uppercut that sent him flying across the room.

The fist and everything connected to it dashed across the room at an incredible speed, slashing the ropes tied around Maruma and allowing her to jump to safety. He stopped, allowing Señor Syzygy to take a good long look at him. He was as tall as four potatoes and wore a pinstripe suit, a Vulpes vulpes that stood as proudly as any man.

Señor Syzygy hadn't needed to look to know that it was him. The punch was familiar enough.

""Damn you, Mr. Fantasticer Fox!"

"You look well," said Maruma, now back on the ground and preparing herself to fight, her sword at the ready. "And here I thought we'd never work together again after Lima."

He growled.

"Don't blame me for that," said Maruma. "You were the one who thought the babies could be reasoned with."

"And now you both have the gall to ignore me," said Señor Syzygy. "No matter! My minions will send you flying through the stratosphere!"

"You'll never send _us_ into space, skywatcher!"

"Well, we're already in-"

"Enough talk! Have at you!"

Creatively described space-themed robots dropped in through the ceiling and attacked both Maruma and Mr. FF, who engaged them in battle. If anyone had been watching, they wouldn't have had any trouble identifying where everyone was and what they were doing at all points in the fight, which lasted exactly as long as it needed to without becoming repetitive. There was much less of a focus on individual blow-by-blow action than there was on how everyone was feeling and operating in the heat of the moment, which gave it all a cohesive flow that nobody really took the time to appreciate.

The battered machines fell to the floor and collapsed into heaps, and their master armed himself with his famed weapon, Halley's Harpoon. Before Señor Syzygy could attack, he found a blade and a pair of sharp claws both pressed up against his throat, his enemies having beaten him to the draw.

"In retrospect," he said, "I probably shouldn't have designed a weapon that only works once every seventy-five years."

_**W**_

BBQbae: david i don't mean this to be rude but are you doing okay

BBQbae: i'm having trouble interpreting this as anything other than a cry for help

David10455898485820111038521211165579977851010101073000041205: ?

BBQbae: also, unborn baby, okay

BBQbae: technically the contest said "minor" didn't it

BBQbae: is a fetus even a minor legally in Wonkaland?

Kahn Feel: I don't care enough to check.

BBQbae: and how did the baby count as solving it?

BBQbae: wouldn't the mom be the one putting in the answer?

Kahn Feel: I assume figured out what to do, told her, and that counted.

Kahn Feel: Not sure how Wonka would know that, though?

the_ladwhocan: Confession, I haven't been able to stop looking up information about the tech Lim's mom uses to speak with him. It's crazy how overdesigned it is.

the_ladwhocan: You couldn't see it on the broadcast but the glasses she was wearing hook up to implants in her back, which themselves send and receive signals to/from her and his brain.

the_ladwhocan: That converts the thoughts of mother/child (or audio files, which the mom can play directly through the glasses) into sound waves that travel through her body and to the other in such a way that they can be heard and understood.

the_ladwhocan: She has literally turned her entire body into a speaker so she can play tin can telephone with her womb.

catayarn: what's even the point of that, i know babies are supposed to be able to hear people speak outside

the_ladwhocan: Sound quality. A baby can hear from the inside, but not with clarity. The internal sound system fixes that.

the_ladwhocan: All the better to hear the nuances of classical music with.

SupaMani: God, I hate audiophiles.

BBQbae: all that effort

BBQbae: and for fucking CHOPIN

Kahn Feel: What's wrong with Chopin?

BBQbae: nothing, if you like repetitive formless miniaturists

XxX_Blakin_XxX: oh, come on

XxX_Blakin_XxX: you wouldn't know good composition if it was staring you in the face

BBQbae: i just want to be clear

BBQbae: are you actually going to come here and defend chopin

btuffshield: this is a new low, even for blakin

XxX_Blakin_XxX: he changed the piano game and you all know it

BBQbae: i've heard of fucking dead feral cats with better taste in music than you

BBQbae: and the piano shit, lmao

BBQbae: god haven't heard THIS shit before

BBQbae: it's all you chopinheads ever talk about because it's the only fucking contribution he ever made and you know it

BBQbae: real composers have skill in variety, not specificity

BBQbae: show me him writing one good waltz, one semi-okay fugue even

XxX_Blakin_XxX: i don't think you're being respectful and i don't want to have this discussion right now

XxX_Blakin_XxX: Chopin is one of the greats

[XxX_Blakin_XxX has been temporarily banned from chat.]

GW: One day.

Chillaxian: I thought he was the more respectful one in that discussion, GW.

GW: Not about that.

GW: He's allowed to have wrong opinions, but there's a limit.

gremlin_guard: Okay, I'm done.

the_ladwhocan: Done?

gremlin_guard: Okay, I'm going to have one last try. I made a final list of all the answers I haven't tried yet, and if it doesn't work I'll accept that it isn't going to happen.

gremlin_guard: I'm probably not going to win the contest.

BBQbae: statistically, yes

BBQbae: no offense

gremlin_guard: I know that in my head. But now I'm going to try and accept that emotionally! Which is the hard part.

gremlin_guard: But that can come in an hour when I'm defeated.

gremlin_guard: Onwards!

5Gpants: smarter move, give up now

5Gpants: fuck wonka already, fuck the contest

heckkio: 5G gets madder about it everyday, makes me happy to see him so angry

heckkio: still don't get why

5Gpants: it's just

5Gpants: gaaaah, whatever

5Gpants: maybe i'll explain why tomorrow

heckkio: "i'm an edgy contrarian and i hate fun and i know i have no defense"

5Gpants: shut up

5Gpants: it's

5Gpants: look

5Gpants: tomorrow

5Gpants: i'll tell you why tomorrow

David10455898485820111038521211165579977851010101073000041205: Oh grem btw

David10455898485820111038521211165579977851010101073000041205: I ended up trying those breathing exercises you mentioned and they helped a lot

David10455898485820111038521211165579977851010101073000041205: i stopped having the nightmares about the room with all the elves

David10455898485820111038521211165579977851010101073000041205: i think i might even put up cookies and milk come december, haha, it's been so long

David10455898485820111038521211165579977851010101073000041205: grem?

_**W**_

Ned Brillbusker did not dislike Uttar Pradesh. He did not dislike the city of Lucknow, or the Air-Zamboni ride that had taken him there, or the stinger-ridden corpses of all the rival network employees who had been foolish enough to try and beat them to the scoop. He did not dislike the nice home that the fifth Golden Ticket winner lived and he did not dislike the fact that he had to be there.

He did dislike Mr. and Mrs. Ahir. They were uncooperative to the needs of the news, and were standing in front of the fifth winner's door.

"It isn't that we don't value what you do," said Mr. Ahir. "But our daughter is a little shy, and she told us that she'd rather not appear in front of several billion people."

"We wouldn't want her to feel uncomfortable," said Mrs. Ahir. "I'm sure you understand."

"I do," said Ned Brillbusker. "I would hate for her to feel uncomfortable. Which is why I want you to open the door. If her parents were bee-cinerated on live television, she would probably feel very very uncomfortable for a very very long time, and I'm sure we all want to avoid that."

"Maybe she could write a letter to you," said Mrs. Ahir, who did not want to be bee-cinerated, not even a little. "She works very hard in her writing classes and I'm sure she could explain herself well and answer any necessary questions."

"If it were up to me I would be very satisfied with that," Ned lied. "But it isn't. The BBC is run by busy bees, you see. The BBC's all-seeing bees will see as bees see and if they fail to see Keerthi than they will bee-cinerate any obstacle that stands between that bee-seeing. And to me, you aren't an obstacle. But to them, those very near-sighted bees, you must understand..."

The doorknob to Keerthi's room began to turn at the sound of intense buzzing, and a gentle voice spoke up from inside.

"If I come out and speak to you, will you promise not to hurt them?"

"Again," said Ned. "It wouldn't be me, it would be the bees. But yes, they would promise not to do anything."

"You don't need to do that," said Mr. Ahir. "It's fine, sweetie. A little bee-cineration never hurt anyone."

"Our factcheckers strongly disagree with that claim," said Ned. "But it is your choice."

"It's okay, Dad. I'll come out."

The door opened, and Keerthi Ahir slowly walked out. She was twelve years old and made up of mostly carbon and awkwardness. Her neck was too long and her forehead was too large and she had one big skin tag on the middle of her nose and sometimes ever since she was little when she was alone she would wiggle it in front of the mirror and call it Chetan and have silly conversations with it.

"Hi," said Keerthi, sticking her shaky hand out to try and be polite. "Please don't bee-cinerate my parents."

"The bees won't need to, now that you've done the sensible thing and come out. Now, may we see it? Your Golden Ticket."

Keerthi reached into the pockets of her private school uniform and picked out the ticket and handed it to Ned.

He looked at it for a moment and handed it back.

"Well," he said. "That certainly is a Golden Ticket if there ever was one. How do you feel about having won it?"

"Um," she said.

"You don't need to look at the cameras," said Ned. "Or the bees."

"Um," she said.

Keerthi's mother wrapped her arm around her left shoulder and pulled her close. Her father did the same for her right side.

"I'm sure she feels strongly about it, and we're very proud of her. But she might be a little tired from all this attention and bee-cineration talk. Thank you for-"

"I didn't think it would work," said Keerthi, interrupting her father. "I was typing up whatever came to my head. It doesn't even make any sense for _that _to be the answer. Nobody else would have..."

Keerthi's mother brought her head down to her daughter's ear and whispered something. Keerthi whispered something back. Mrs. Ahir thought about it for a short moment and then smiled wider than she ever had in her entire life. She whispered to Mr. Ahir and he did the same.

"Please do not do that," said Ned. "It is very rude to everyone watching at home. No one has hearing that good."

"I think," said Mr. Ahir, "That Keerthi is doing great. That is all that matters."

The three of them stepped back as a smiling huddled mass into Keerthi's room, and Mrs. Ahir shut the door. Ned knocked again, but they did not answer.

He sighed. He did not sign off or order the cameras to stop rolling, instead calling an intern to bring him a certain device. Igor's reanimated corpse shambled over and placed it in his hands, and Ned held it up for the benefit of the audience. He pressed a button and turned it on while beginning to speak.

"I would like to apologize to everyone watching for the less than comprehensive coverage," said Ned. "Unfortunately, I suspect there is nothing to be done about it. If my hunch is correct, even bee-cineration would not bring us any closer to the news."

The device began to beep wildly.

"Yes, there we are. I have only seen this once before. Sadly, the Parent-O-Meter confirms it. Mr. and Mrs. Ahir are _wonderful _parents. We are recording maximum levels of love and support for one's chosen interests in this household… not to mention stability and emotional security readings that are off the charts. It is with a heavy heart that I am able to say with full confidence that Keerthi Ahir has been raised to feel comfortable sharing everything she is thinking and feeling with her guardians, and that she completely loves and trusts them."

He sighed and shook his head.

"For society, perhaps, this is good. But for the news, there could be no worse state of affairs. After all, no good parent would ever let their child end up on television."

He wiped a tear away as he ended the broadcast.

"I'm Ned Brillbusker with the BBC, signing off."

_**W**_

The problem with stealing from younger children, Chili had discovered, was that sometimes those younger children had older brothers and sisters.

He once had one of those, he remembered.

He had somehow gotten away with a nice jacket and more chocolate than he had ever touched in his life, at least one-hundred bars of the stuff, along with the sack the short little fat boy had been carrying it all in. It was his. His eyes were black and his nose was bloody and his body was covered in bruises but the chocolate was all his.

He walked on the city streets for a long time with his trophies, not exactly understanding what he was doing. He had finally gotten something good, and he was risking it all by walking around and giving them a chance to catch him again, but he didn't stop. He realized that he liked it. He liked the way that all the grown-ups around him were ignoring him, ignoring his chocolate and the blood trickling down his face. He especially liked that they couldn't _completely _ignore him, even just when quickly walking by, that they had happy faces that became sad when they saw him and what he had earned.

Time disappeared, and he kept walking around in the cold. The older brother of his victim had hit his head hard, and it was tough to think. But the feeling of victory didn't subside. He kept walking.

At some point he realized he had ended up in something of a crowd that had gathered up at the glass window to a storefront, watching the display televisions. The news was on. They had found the fifth Golden Ticket winner. He had missed most of it, but he watched anyway.

He watched her and her family step back into a door, holding each other closely. He watched her smile.

The one that didn't finish anything hadn't smiled.

The one that vaped hadn't smiled.

The one that praised the sea had definitely smiled, but he hadn't seen it. Her helmet prevented that.

If the baby had smiled, he never would have known.

But her. She was smiling. She was smiling and she had something that he never would have and he didn't know what it was - he remembered that he did know what it was, it was the Golden Ticket - and he hated her. He wanted her to die even more than he wanted Grandpa Groinfogger to die.

He wanted her to hurt. He wanted her to _lose._

"Thank you, Ned. In other breaking news, boy detective Chillenial Lee has announced that he has solved the Golden Ticket puzzle, although he has yet to input his answer. He intends to demonstrate his solution tomorrow in front of a private audience at his manor, with plans of a time-delayed livestream..."

Chili stopped listening. It didn't matter what anyone else thought or did or planned.

There was one more Golden Ticket, and it was going to be his.


	6. The End

the_ladwhocan: Anybody still up?

5Gpants: just me i think

the_ladwhocan: Shoot.

the_ladwhocan: Oh well.

the_ladwhocan: Hey, if you aren't going to sleep soon, you want to give me that Wonka rant you promised?

5Gpants: uh

5Gpants: yeah, sure

5Gpants: let me go pee first

the_ladwhocan: Take your time.

5Gpants: okay i will preface this by saying that i know this is a very first world problem

5Gpants: maybe even a zero world problem if that makes sense

5Gpants: i know that people have bigger problems than me, i know i'm lucky to live in a place where i have food and clean water and internet access and i'm not being forced to do a constant Jaleel White impression under penalty of death

5Gpants: the world's fucking nuts

5Gpants: that's part of it i guess

5Gpants: i'm not that smart and maybe it sounds callous coming so soon after the baby ways but i don't even know if things are getting better or worse

5Gpants: you have so many people suffering, and so many people improving, and all the metrics for deciding what counts as suffering and what counts as improving are so mixed up sometimes that I don't get it

5Gpants: you have looming threats on the horizon, so many ways we can fuck up everything, so many ways everything might suddenly get so much better

5Gpants: there are billions of people with millions of agendas who want me to be an optimist or a cynic and everything in between

5Gpants: there is more art and information and technology and literature and opinions than any other point in human history

5Gpants: is this bad? is this good?

5Gpants: i

5Gpants: don't

5Gpants: know

5Gpants: all i do know is that it's complicated

5Gpants: it is more complicated than I could understand in one thousand lifetimes, and i am forced to resign myself to the fact that i live on a blue marble that i will never understand and experience anything close to the totality of in my short meaningless life

5Gpants: and every day it gets more complicated!

5Gpants: more shit!

5Gpants: more stuff to read! more people to know! more ideas to understand!

5Gpants: but the worst part is me

5Gpants: this should be terrifying, and it is

5Gpants: but it should also be exciting

5Gpants: i SHOULD want to experience all this

5Gpants: i SHOULD want to help fix all these problems

5Gpants: i SHOULD want to understand as much as I can

5Gpants: and i do want all that

5Gpants: really

5Gpants: i do

5Gpants: just not enough to actually do it

5Gpants: i sit and i go through the motions

5Gpants: it's not as if I'm doing nothing or that I'm not working to improve my life personally

5Gpants: but about all that stuff i mentioned, it's just

5Gpants: and this is going to sound so pathetic

5Gpants: but i can't get excited about any of it

5Gpants: i try so hard

5Gpants: i try so so so fucking hard dude

5Gpants: but instead i look out at all of it and sit and do nothing

5Gpants: and the more complex it becomes, the more apathetic i become

5Gpants: why try to make everything better? it's not even a question of whether or not i'll make a difference

5Gpants: it's a question of whether i'll even be able to KNOW that i made a difference

5Gpants: i'm apathetic to my own apathy at this point

5Gpants: despite this insane world to explore and the relative freedom to do it i am paralyzed and BORED

5Gpants: how can i possibly be bored?

5Gpants: how in the flying frompnutter with all this can I be BORED?

5Gpants: but i am

5Gpants: and one of the few exceptions

5Gpants: the very few events i can barely manage to make myself actually get passionate about

5Gpants: is when someone comes along and creates something for me to be excited about on purpose

5Gpants: as I don't have enough already

5Gpants: but it works sometimes

5Gpants: i don't know why

5Gpants: a joke with a punchline, a story with an ending, a mystery with a solution, a proper conversation with a proper goodbye

5Gpants: a dumb candy riddle with an answer

5Gpants: i never got why these got me excited when next to nothing else could

5Gpants: they just did for whatever reason

5Gpants: but i have been thinking long and hard and it finally hit me

5Gpants: they make sense

5Gpants: there is never going to be a moment for me when i understand everything on the big marble

5Gpants: but someone can make a little marble for me, and if they put heart and care and thought into it then i get sucked into it

5Gpants: and if they do a really shrapgrinking job, it has an ending and it all comes together in the right way

5Gpants: and when that happens, man

5Gpants: that fucking feeling of just

5Gpants: "I get it. I understand everything."

5Gpants: we never get that feeling anymore

5Gpants: we never ever ever ever get that feeling, and when we do it's bullshit

5Gpants: but i live for that bullshit

5Gpants: those little marbles are few and far between and i love them so much

5Gpants: they make me want to care

5Gpants: they make me care

5Gpants: they even make me start to care about the big marble again

5Gpants: it's religion, almost

5Gpants: not almost

5Gpants: it's religion

5Gpants: so imagine being a person who figures this shit out

5Gpants: and imagine having the power to make those little marbles

5Gpants: and you go and say, you know what

5Gpants: i'm going to make little marbles on purpose

5Gpants: and i'm going to get people to like them

5Gpants: and i'm going to get people to like them a lot

5Gpants: and then i'm going to take the marble, right before that feeling of understanding can come, like right right right before

5Gpants: and i'm going to crush it

5Gpants: i'm going to step on it and toss it out and LAUGH at them in their dumb fucking faces for having the audicity to wanting to LIKE something and KNOW something

5Gpants: to want to figure out an answer

5Gpants: to want to make the world better

5Gpants: to want to feel

5Gpants: to want to stop experiencing that neverending apathy in the face of constant complication and convolution

5Gpants: to want some shred of understanding

5Gpants: it's evil

5Gpants: it's fucking evil

the_ladwhocan: Sounds more like you have a problem with people like JUROR than you do Bucket.

5Gpants: no i don't

5Gpants: JUROR's whole thing is a big joke anyway

5Gpants: nothing doesn't having an ending

5Gpants: he chooses to end something before common sense would dictate because he believes it makes a better marble

5Gpants: that is an ending

5Gpants: maybe it's one that i think is dumb but he honestly thinks that he is making something better that way

5Gpants: and i don't hate everyone who doesn't finish a marble either

5Gpants: i see the marblemakers and they go through the same apathy shit we do

5Gpants: to the level where they can't even care about their own marbles

5Gpants: it makes me sad, it makes me upset but not at them personally

5Gpants: i know it's not on purpose

5Gpants: but people like bucket?

5Gpants: dude

5Gpants: you know why you do something like this?

5Gpants: it's not to make six winners

5Gpants: it's to make a billion losers

5Gpants: it's to giggle and smirk to yourself because you managed to make a bunch of innocent people sad and disappointed for no fucking reason

5Gpants: it's having a full understanding of the problem and then purposely training people to be even MORE apathetic and hopeless because you think it's funny

5Gpants: he isn't going to give the answer up himself, he isn't going to let anyone else in the factory, and he's never going to explain his reasons (assuming he had any real ones to begin with)

5Gpants: him and one of the six are going to go in and have a swell time and board themselves up with all the answers and do it all again in seventy years

5Gpants: fuck bucket

5Gpants: fuck the contest

5Gpants: fuck everyone who thinks it's fine to do that to people

5Gpants: life's hard enough


	7. Of The Contest: The Sixth Ticket

"Go fuck yourself. Please connect me to the internet."

Mr. Munoza sighed. His son Gabriel was unhappy, which meant that he was a horrible father.

They had been driving on the country roads together for close to three days. In his head, Mr. Munoza had pictured the trip as a chance for them to bond. They would have seen the mountains and the crisp clean air and the wide open skies and then all the teenage angrybittz boiling inside his son's heart would turn to pure lovesparket. They would stop to eat at diners and catch baseballs and accidentally run over a deer. The deer would be bleeding out and it would be clear that it wasn't going to make it so Mr. Munoza would take a shotgun out from the back of his trunk and load it and aim it but his hand would start trembling a little and his son would put his hand on his shoulder and say, "I got this, Dad," and then he would take the gun and shoot it himself and they would hug and stare at the majesty they had destroyed together and bask in the ultimate glory of the circle of life.

It was the stuff of magic.

That did not happen. Mr. Munoza hated to blame others for his failures, but he had to admit that WonkaSolver was at fault. Gabriel had refused to go on the trip unless Mr. Munoza agreed to take his new invention along with them, which had required him to mount a large four-hundred pound brick of metal to the top of his van.

He would not have minded that, but the brick was very distracting. Every minute or so it asked politely to be connected to the internet, and if it wasn't, Gabriel was busy ordering it to tell Mr. Munoza to go fuck himself for not driving faster. This meant that there were no chances for bonding or catching baseballs or even semi-intentionally murdering wildlife and it broke Mr. Munoza's heart.

"Maybe when we get to the manor you will feel more like talking."

"WonkaSolver. Inform my father that I don't care about anything at the manor except for Mr. Glunka, and that I won't be speaking to anyone else unless they give me eggs to drink."

Mr. Glunka Cervantes was a nobel prize winning scientist famous for his work in the field of physics. As his name implied, he was a direct descendant of Miguel de Cervantes, the writer of Don Quixote, a scathing 17th century diatribe against the viability of wind power.

Under normal circumstances, it may have been strange to imagine a generic factory worker like Mr. Munoza and his son attending a gala with such an important person present. But Mr. Munoza had personally met the host of the party, boy detective Chillenial Lee - who, for the sake of brevity, was often called Chill Lee - when he solved a murder mystery at his generic factory.

Chill Lee in Mr. Munoza's opinion was a particularly interesting person. His parents were themselves famous detectives, and he had already made a big name for himself in the mystery-solving world by the age of nine. He did not have an official Watson, but whenever he traveled somewhere to solve a mystery, he would pick someone he found interesting at the start of his investigation and make them his temporary sidekick, which he loved doing. Mr. Munoza had filled this role for several days during the factory escapade and enjoyed it greatly, finding himself very good at saying things that were almost smart so the detective could say smarter things immediately after and seem more competent by comparison. It had been great fun.

He had remembered thinking to himself that Chill Lee would have made for a fantastic protagonist of a novel, or in lieu of a novel, some other silly thing.

Since the Bucket puzzle had involved the entire world, it seemed that Chill Lee had been unable to choose only a single Watson, so he invited many important people to his manor so that everyone could be Watson. It made enough sense. The detective had taken a liking to Mr. Munoza during their short time together, so was invited (along with a plus one) to come as well.

"Gabriel will not be speaking to anyone at the party except for Mr. Glunka unless they give him eggs to drink. Please connect me to the internet."

Mr. Munoza had tried for days to explain all this interesting exposition to his son but Gabriel would hear none of it. He was egg-deprived and frustrated and with that computer by his side there was simply nothing that could be done until they arrived.

Mr. Munoza continued to drive. Soon, hopefully, there would be love.

Love and dead deer.

_**W**_

Chillenial Lee had destroyed the detective industry. People said it about him frequently, and while standing at the entrance to his manor and greeting all the famous and important people who had accepted his invitation he thought to himself that it had to be true.

He was nine years old but he looked closer to fifteen than he did ten. He was missing both of his index fingers, which had fallen off from overuse, and his head was shaped like a tall head-shaped pinecone. As he always did, on the top of his head he had balanced a thick glass of Peachtown Peachy Peach Juice, which was his favorite drink both to consume and head-balance.

In the distance of the evening darkness, he saw two more guests, old friends of his. They had chosen to walk rather than drive, and one sat perched on the shoulder of the other, both smiling big friendly grins.

"Miss Sophia! BFG! So wonderful that you could make it. Please, come right in and have a glass of Peachtown Peachy Peach Juice. The Queen already arrived an hour ago."

The BFG smiled and tipped his hat, having no trouble fitting through the door. Chillenial Lee had a big house because he was an important person and most important people had big homes.

In the next hour, many more guests came, adding to the hundreds already in attendance.

The President of the United States entered confidently, along with his secretaries, who were very space-hating and unconfident respectively. Chill Lee did not make a big deal about it since had also been very confident, but the Vice President Nalak decided to be incredibly rude when entering with his coworkers, not responding to his greeting. President Kalan apologized on his behalf. Apparently he had been feeling very flat as of late.

He recommended that he have some Peachtown Peachy Peach Juice, which was supposedly excellent for that sort of affliction. He smiled and thanked him.

Marama Jewel and her deformed reverse-albino pet pomeranian arrived after that, both drenched in the blood of astronomers. She seemed upset. When Chill Lee asked her why, she explained that she had recently lost an important battle against her nemesis and had been going on a hunting spree to try and make up for it. He patted her on the back and insisted that she have a glass of Peachtown Peachy Peach Juice, which would doubtlessly comfort her and give her the strength needed to continue her anti-astronomy crusade. She smiled and thanked him.

Next came Ned Brillbusker and his crew, who were there for the promise of news and had traveled by Air-Zamboni. Chill Lee had his bees taken in by the bee valet, and promised that his snipers would kill any rival newscasters who attempted to sneak into the premises, and he need not worry about it. Ned didn't really seem like he had any immediate problems but Chill Lee told him to drink Peachtown Peachy Peach Juice anyway because it was delicious and that had been the established pattern anyhoo.

Ned was filming, but he had promised not to do it live. The event was going to be streamed, but on a thirty minute delay to ensure that no one tried watching it and solving it after hearing part of the answer. Although Chill Lee did not expect any of his guests to try and cheat and solve it themselves while hearing it live, he used a special force field to block all internet access in and around the manor except for the streaming cameras. Each person at the party also had three designated snipers who watched them at all times and were ready to take them out the moment they attempted to solve the puzzle.

After Ned was very rich man Manny Billsanbuxx, who made sure to mention that he was not illiterate because he wasn't, and Supreme Leader Urkel, and Max Engelmen, who owned and operated ORPHANAGES S.A., and Dr. George, who was the greatest doctor who had ever lived and who could cure any illness, and Wilma V. Pleasant, the newly elected leader of the New Royalty Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children and Extremely Annoying Mice, and poultry legends Boggis and Bunce but not Bean, who had not been invited due to his strong preference for apple cider over peach juice, and finally JUROR, who was the only Golden Ticket winner who had answered Chill Lee's phone calls. Chill Lee hadn't been sure if he was coming based on the conversation they had since JUROR had only said "I am," before hanging up, but he was pleasantly surprised to see him there.

Like all great detectives Chill Lee had a special appreciation for art and had bought several of JUROR's paintings and art pieces, which were all extremely expensive. He had one hanging in his grand staircase and from the door he could hear his visitors admiring it. It was called "Here is an Unfinished Banana: Judge Cultivation", and it was an unfinished painting of a banana.

"I never thought I'd ever see a painting that would genuinely make me gasp in only six brush strokes," said one guest.

"I rather enjoy this painting, if this is what it is. It really shows a fickle and playful attitude from the artist," said another.

"What an awful painting," said the correct person, who admitted to themselves that contemporary art was probably too easy of a target for satire but decided to go ahead and do it anyway because why the heck not it was okay to be lazy sometimes.

After JUROR came many more before Dr. Glunka Cervantes, who was wearing his famous funglasses, along with a helpful pin reminding everyone that he hated space as much as everyone else did. Chill Lee paid his shades a compliment and asked if he was happy to hear about his estranged daughter having won a Golden Ticket.

"Oh," he said, frowning sadly. "Her. Yes. Definitely. I am very proud."

It was public knowledge that Tide Honey had not been in contact with either her mother or father for a long time. No one knew why.

He slumped his shoulders and trudged forward, and Chill Lee insisted that he drink some Peachtown Peachy Peach Juice in order to cope with his complete failure as a father.

The one person Chill Lee had wanted to come most, his greatest hero, had not been able to make it. That was understandable. It was a long way from the clouds.

The final two guests arrived, Mr. Munoza and his son, as well as a large rectangular machine the latter was wheeling around. He greeted them both.

"Do you having fucking eggs around here?" asked Gabriel.

"No," said Chill Lee. "But I have plenty of Peachtown Peachy Peach Juice, and it is pluzzploppingly delicious. Please have a glass."

Gabriel spit on the floor.

"Disgusting. The only thing I hate more than that stuff is gazztromples."

Gabriel stomped in, ignoring a flapperpasted Chill Lee, who couldn't believe that a guest would say something that horrible. Mr. Munoza began to apologize for his son, but Chill Lee stopped him.

"It's fine, Mr. Munoza. It isn't your fault."

"Of course it is. I'm his father. I'm trying to fix it, you know. As soon as I can find a deer for us accidentally murder with our car, I'm sure everything will improve."

"Obviously," said Chill Lee. "I hope you enjoy the evening. I'm sure it will be exciting. Still. Maybe keep a close eye on him, if possible."

"Of course," said Mr. Munoza, who joined everyone else inside the manor.

Chill Lee shook his head and smiled. He was a detective, and detectives were around horrible people all the time. It was fine to have one or a few at his party.

Besides, now that everyone had arrived, it could finally begin. The cameras were ready to roll and everyone was feeling good and peachfluzzed from all the juice.

He entered and shut the door behind him, feeling giddy. The answer was so close, and there was nobody that loved coming up with one as much as Chillenial Lee.

_**W**_

Ms. Ownreewhard was a kind woman. No one had ever told her that, but she was sure of it. Every night before she went to sleep she put on her noise-canceling headphones, stared at the mirror and took a little time, three hours or so, to remind herself why she was as great as she was.

Tonight it was easy. In one day, she had done three good deeds! She wondered if anyone had ever done as many good deeds in one day as that. No, she decided. Definitely not. She had set a record and deserved some type of award.

In the morning, she had gone out for brunch at a luxurious outdoor cafe, enjoying a breakfast of merde de béton et d'oie, when a man sitting behind her began making a ruckus. He was a street performer and a terrible one at that, clutching his throat and dancing a boorish jig with his back to the floor. Everyone around her thought it was as bad as she did or worse, many of them screaming and trying to get to him presumably so they could wipe the awful purple paint off his face.

The authorities were quick to arrive and try to take him away, but the only way to him was through her seat, and they all yelled at her to stand, trying to bring along a Stop Dancing Bed. It was clear that they were very desperate to put an end to his shameful performance.

Ms. Ownreewhard had a personal policy of taking exactly forty minutes to finish any meal she ate with no breaks, and allowing for them to pass would have required her to pause her meal twenty minutes earlier than intended, but due to the intensity of the situation she only forced them to wait ten.

A remarkable good deed, even if it had already become a redundant one. By then he had already stopped dancing himself!

Her second good deed was somehow more amazing. After leaving the cafe, Ms. Ownreeward had been crossing the street when she noticed a rather plump woman carrying a large transparent sack of chocolate candies. The bag had the words 'FOR THE CHILDREN OF DARK-PAIN-LEECHNOSE ACADEMY - MAY THESE SWEETS HELP YOU FEEL BETTER ABOUT THE BLINDNESS AND THE HORRIBLE CHRONIC DISEASES AND LEECHES IN YOUR NOSES' printed on the side.

Ms. Ownreewhard stared at the woman and her bag before she came to understand what was happening. Clearly, the woman was about to give up on a diet and stuff herself silly with treats, and she had come up with a fake sign in order to feel less embarrassed about it. She had been so hungry on the walk home she even licked off all the opacity off her own bag.

Ms. Ownreewhard decided that she couldn't let the woman ruin all of her hard work in a moment of weakness. She came up from behind her and shouted, "Look! Over there! A cure for leech noses!"

The woman turned and Ms. Ownreewhard snatched the bag out of her hands and ran away. As she theorized, all the horrible plumpness had reached the woman's brain and slowed her thinking; she had been chubbygunked enough to believe her own silly story!

When she was far enough to be sure that she wouldn't be caught, she stopped, took a look at the inside of the bag and one of the bars inside it.

'DELICIOUS WONKA TONGUESCRONGGLER! WILL SCRONGGLE YOUR TONGUE LIKE NO OTHER! NOW WITH TEN TIMES THE AMOUNT OF THEOBROMINE!"

Ms. Ownreewhard was too full to eat, and she had plenty of chocolate at home, so she decided to make her own deed better by giving away the chocolate she had fingersmithed. She didn't know who to give it to until she came by an adorable animal shelter that had many happy doggies and kitties peacefully playing together in an outdoor area, so she unwrapped as many bars as she could and tossed them over the fence. She didn't stay to watch them eat; she had never had a doggie or a kittie before, so she wasn't used to seeing that much cutieflubble at once! It would have stopped her heart!

Her third good deed was the best of all. That night, she was walking in a local park, enjoying the wonderful classical music playing from the speakers, when she came across an ugly little boy holding a bag of chocolate of his own, much larger than the one she had fingersmithed earlier. His mouth was covered with the stuff. He was very skinny so it couldn't have been his bag, and Ms. Ownreewhard was sharp enough to piece together how he had obtained it.

"You tried too, didn't you? She must have relapsed, even after I offered her so much supportive motivation… nothing to be done about it. You shouldn't feel bad if you see her strolling about with another bag tomorrow, young man. It's how they are. The plump never learn."

The boy didn't say anything back to her. He was clearly too inspired by her good deeds to speak. She got down on one knee.

"I understand, little boy. It can be hard to be around people like me. We are very inspiring. But remember. If you work hard and keep doing good deeds like me, someday you too can be inspiring and look fantastic and own a large, non-password protected computer with access to the internet."

She stood up and said goodbye, but after she turned around she heard the boy starting to cry. She went back to his side and asked him what was the matter.

He told her that it wouldn't be fair to tell her, on account of how inspiring and nice of a person she was.

"Nonsense," she said. "Go right ahead."

The boy wiped his tears away and explained his life story. His father had been gobbled up by the plump when he was a baby, and his mother had died from the Dreaded Shrinks, and his aunt had been killed by a mysterious carpet snake, and his uncle had murdered with a leg of lamb, so he had no one else to turn to. He also had incurable brain chickens and Back-to-Front-to-Back Dyslexia.

"And I knew," said the boy, "Like I always do, that my life will never ever get any better. But when I saw how inspiring you were, I briefly let myself imagine that you might become my new guardian and take care of me and also teach me how to do so many incredible good deeds, but I remembered that I was being silly. No one like you would ever want anything to do with someone like me."

Ms. Ownreewhard was almost brought to tears, and she ushered the boy home with her, promising that she would adopt him and give him everything he could ever want.

She was lying. It was for the best. If she was honest and told him that she was going to send to an orphanage the next morning, he might have tried to run away.

As soon as they got to her house, she locked him in a closet. It might have seemed like she was doing something evil, but if he had gotten a chance to see her possessions he would have quickly become accustomed to a lifestyle he could never have. The closet was the safest place for him, no matter how much he tried to scream otherwise.

Satisfied with herself, she turned away from the mirror and went to sleep, forgetting to take her headphones off.

_**W**_

The largest room of Chillenial Lee's manor was shaped like a great big circle, with a spot in the middle where the floor was raised up like a small round stage.

On this little stage had been placed a desk and a computer. Chill Lee stood in front of the desk, staring out at the audience, all of his guests having been ushered into the room for the answer. No one was talking anymore. They were all ready for it.

"Well," said Chill Lee. No one is talking anymore, so I guess you're all ready for it."

The continued silence spoke for itself. They all had very high expectations.

"You know," said Chill Lee. "Your silence reminds me of a completely tangential, unintelligible dream sequence I once had-"

Everyone booed. Chili put his hands up and smiled.

"Okay, okay. You got me. Let's get on with it."

He pointed with his stump finger to the first person he saw in the crowd. It was Mr. Munoza.

"Tell me! If you were looking down at a giant swarm of zingerflies, and wanted to pick out a handful of only the best ones, how would you do it?"

"A net?" Mr. Munoza answered.

"Exactly! You would use the net. There is no greater place for gathering whatever it is a person might need and having very reasonable conversations. But there is still a big problem. How can one figure out which of the zingerflies are best?"

"A search?"

"Yes," Chill Lee shouted. "Excellent, Mr. Munoza! A search. And when we look at the colored wings of the zingerflies, flapping about as zingerfly wings do, we come to understand-"

"This analogy is boring," said Gabriel. "Hurry up and finish so we can go home, you fucking gunktwit."

Chill Lee frowned, but after giving the crowd a once over he saw that the rude teen probably had a point.

He sighed and signaled for the men waiting above the ceiling to axe the zingerfly release. It would have helped the metaphor, but fine. Nobody appreciated fun anymore.

"Fine then. Simpler question: what do all the winners have in common?"

"They all have Golden Tickets," said Mr. Munoza.

"And?" asked Chill Lee.

"They all have eyeballs," said Mr. Munoza

Chill Lee frowned.

"Does anyone else have any better guesses?" he asked.

"They all should connect me to the internet."

"They are all less confident than me."

"They are all children that I don't want to turn into mice and then put inside a blender."

"They."

"They all love a certain thing more than anyone else in the entire world," said the correct person. "When the puzzle asks for someone to 'INPUT WHAT I LIKE BEST INTO ME', it is asking what the person individually likes best: what they literally appreciate more than everyone else does. JUROR loves nothing, Mahuika loves vaping, Tide loves the ocean, Lim loves Chopin even though he's unable to admit it to himself, and Keerthi loves herself. The puzzle uses both some secret global panopticon and an advanced form of Wonka technology mentioned by Mike Teavee in his online memoirs that allows someone to physically reach into their computer and literally insert their answer into the bucket, the technology only activating when the right answer makes contact with the screen."

"Well," said Chill Lee, who snapped his fingers right before three muffled shots fired into the crowd. "I guess nobody here got it. But have no fear! I will reveal all, the clever protagonist that I clearly am. You see, all the five winners so far, they all love a certain thing more than anyone else in the entire world!"

"Wow," said everyone, who were all extremely impressed.

_**W**_

Chili had been staring at the bucket for three hours.

It had been a long hard night. Breaking the lock to the closet had not been difficult, and neither had operating the computer on Ms. Ownreewhard's desk once he found the manual (not counting a slight confusion while trying to locate a 'computer mouse'). But the puzzle itself was not so easily conquered.

He had tried everything. He watched the interviews, he read discussions people had online about it, he searched and searched. He tried not to let the insanity of the technology he had found confuse or dazzle him. He could spend time marveling at it once he had won.

His hands shook as he typed and typed answer after answer. His stomach hurt and not in the usual way. It was full. Between the dozens of bars he took from the kid and the hundreds more he found in the cabinets of the woman's home, he had consumed more chocolate and sugar than he ever had in his life in the span of twelve hours.

His body had never done it before but it wanted him to stop. He refused. No pain was enough to make him stop eating chocolate. He could have been on fire and he wouldn't have stopped.

His stomach would simply have to deal with it.

He was almost out of time. The stream was happening live, as he was thinking about it. He was out of options. He only had three theories left on his list, ones he had found online, in strange ugly places with strange ugly people, and he went through them and decided what to try in the few minutes that remained.

1\. Find a snozzcumber, chop it up into pieces, mix it with Royal Jelly and one large tin of brown paint and drink it up. In the answer section, type up what you think it tasted like.

2\. Buy a microphone. Don't plug it into the computer, and don't even unwrap it. Instead, go out and use it to accidentally murder some deer with your son.

3\. Type up what you love most, better than anyone else.

Chili knew which one was most plausible, but he didn't have any snozzcumbers on him, so he went with number three.

He tried thinking of what he liked more than anyone else. Did he like anything more than anything else? Was there anything that he wanted or needed more than anyone else on the entire world?

There were so many people out there. What were the chances that he liked even one thing more than all of them?

He typed up 'WINNING'. Nothing happened.

He typed up 'WATCHING THEM LOSE AND SUFFER'. Nothing happened.

He typed up 'HATING EVERYONE'. Nothing happened.

He grumbled and bit his lip. He had the idea for one other answer but he hated it. There was one last thing that he might have wanted more than anyone.

It had been when he was looking at Keerthi when she won that he realized what it was. It was something he guessed he had wanted for a long time, deep down. He hated that he wanted it as badly as he did but he did. He wanted it. It hurt so bad to admit it because he hadn't had it and he probably wouldn't ever get it but he really really did. He wanted it and felt empty without it and hated everyone who got it and wouldn't have minded if they all died for getting it and not sharing any.

He took a sad breath, typed it up, and hit enter.

Nothing happened.

Chili realized that he was crying. He wiped his tears away and stuffed a chocolate bar into his mouth. And one more. And one more. And one more. And one more...

_**W**_

Chill Lee had the crowd eating out of the palm of his hand.

"When the puzzle asks for someone to 'INPUT WHAT I LIKE BEST INTO ME', it is asking what the person individually likes best: what they literally appreciate more than everyone else does."

"But it uses the word I and then the word me in the same sentence," said Boggis. "That doesn't make any sense if the 'I' is supposed to be the puzzle-solver and the 'me' is supposed to be Bucket himself representing the bucket."

"Wonka is using the unroyale I," Chill Lee explained.

"Huh," said Wilma V. Pleasant.

"JUROR loves nothing more than anyone else in the world, you see. That is why he was the first to solve the puzzle. As soon as he tried to solve it, nothing was already in the bucket! As for Mahuika, her vape smoke must have been floating around her computer screen when she opened the page, so it floated into the bucket instantly. Not complex at all!"

"But the ocean is extremely big," said Bunce. "How could Tide Honey fit all that inside the screen?"

"Good question," said Chill Lee. "She didn't. Her pet crab and best friend Jeremy must have stuck his claw inside the screen himself. Since she loves the ocean more than anyone else, she also must love everything _inside _of it more than anyone else!"

"Crabs in a bucket," muttered Miss Sophia, who didn't really get the logic behind that but okay whatever sure.

"And Lim?" asked Ned.

"Lim is a baby, and is not emotionally mature enough to admit that he has awful taste and loves the work of Chopin. He probably asked his mother to stop playing it while subconsciously knowing that it would only make her play it _more_, so when she tapped the screen with the sound waves traveling through her body, they entered the bucket and interpreted his influence as enough for him to be the puzzle solver."

"Uh," said Dr. Cervantes. "I guess that might make-"

"And yes, yes. You are right. How can Keerthi love herself more than anyone on the planet? If that could be an answer, wouldn't any narcissistic person have been able to solve it as well simply by entering the screen themselves? Of course not! A narcissist is someone who loves a false image of themselves, not themselves as they actually are. Only a child raised in a loving home can love themselves the most while also having a perfect understanding of who they really are!"

"But-"

"You are right, Malama," said Chill Lee. "We have been using 'love' and 'like' interchangeably, even though they are very different. Obviously Keerthi's mother and father _love _her more than anyone... but she _likes_ herself more than anyone, since she has good parents! And that was the word used in the puzzle. So she put her finger on her screen or tablet and solved it on accident when it fell in the bucket!"

"I."

Chill Lee raised his arm high into the air.

"No need to confirm my findings, JUROR! I already know that I'm right! And I, Boy Detective Chillenial Lee, love one thing more than anyone else: finding the right answer! And here I have written a note with all I have said and wrapped it up into a ring on my right finger-stump. I will now put in inside the bucket and become the sixth Golden Ticket winner. This is my moment! This is my time! No matter what anyone says, this is my Chill Lee and the Chocolate Factory: Fudge Revelation!"

Chill Lee winded his arm back and sent it flying towards the screen. His finger glided through the air, watched by every available pair of eyes in the room.

It ploinked against the screen. Nothing happened.

"Oh," he said.

"You were right about that one part with the screen," said JUROR. "If it makes you feel any better."

"No, look," said the BFG, who knew how to read. "It says that he won! But it also spelt his name wrong."

"Yes, we can all see that," said Manny Billsanbux.

Chill Lee looked closely at the screen and frowned. He wasn't feeling like much of a protagonist anymore.

_**W**_

There was brown vomit everywhere. It was on Ms. Ownreewhard's carpets, and on her floors, and on her many framed paintings of all the good deeds she had done.

Most importantly it was on the computer screen, which it had gone inside. The bucket was now filled with chocolately vomit. Chili stared at it, not knowing what to do. He had severely misunderstood how computers worked.

Little fireworks began firing on the top half of the screen. They formed words.

'CONGRATULATIONS! YOU WIN :D! YOU DID A VERY GOOD JOB OF SOLVING THE PUZZLE! I OWN A CHOCOLATE FACTORY SO OF COURSE WHAT I LIKE BEST IS CHOCOLATE! AND ALL YOU HAD TO DO WAS PUT IT INSIDE THE BUCKET! YOU ARE VERY GOOD AT RIDDLES! REACH IN AND TAKE IT!'

An arrow pointed inside the bucket. Chili followed it, reached inside, then pulled out the sixth Golden Ticket.

He wiped the vomit off of it and began to read. There was the long formal congratulatory message that Ned had read on television the day JUROR had won, but beneath it there were also more instructions on what he was to do next.

'SERIOUSLY GOOD JOB I MEAN IT ;D! THAT WAS A HARD RIDDLE! YOU ARE INVITED TO MY FACTORY THE DAY AFTER THE LAST PERSON WINS THE CONTEST! YOU CAN TAKE TWO ADULTS OR GUARDIANS WITH YOU! WE WILL HAVE A TON OF FUN TOGETHER XD!'

Chili read it twice over before putting it in his pocket and leaving Ms. Ownreewhard's house.

He felt weird. Part of it was the sugar, he thought. Part of it he didn't know. He was happy but everything also seemed completely pointless. The air was cold and somehow he was already hungry again. It felt like walking in a dream.

He made it home after four long hours. The sun was beginning to rise and Grandpa Groinfogger had died in his sleep.

He was still warm. Chili gave him a hug and draped the blanket over his head and stayed perfectly still until he heard the Air-Zamboni land. He said bye and walked outside without spitting on his face or pushing him off the bed like he had always planned out in his head.

Ned was there.

Chili didn't smile and he didn't cry as Ned approached. He didn't feel like doing either.

News was reported.

**End of Bar I. **


	8. The Chocolate Factory

One million people were gathered in front of the gates to Wonkaland, which was either in England or America. Nobody really knew. The sky was a dark gr[redacted]y col[redacted]r.

From the outside, Wonkaland did not look like a happy place. It was one perfectly fenced-off square mile of bare concrete and old factory buildings embellished with moss and broken windows. None of them appeared as if they had been used since the first contest, if not long before. But everyday automated trucks would drive out of one building with Wonka candies and crumpets and birth control pills and death control pills and such. They never stopped.

Everyone knew this was because the real Wonkaland was underground. But no one in the crowd, as massive and excited as they all were, would be seeing any of it. That was a privilege reserved only for the Golden Ticket winners.

"Look," shouted a man in the crowd, who happened to have the best eyesight in the world. He was pointing to the sky. "One of the winners!"

Everyone was quiet and confused for several minutes, but then they all got very excited. A helicopter began to fly over the horizon, approaching the entrance to the gates. Everyone knew that it had to be one of the winners, since any aircraft that approached Wonkaland without permission would have already been shot down. After it was about halfway there, it stopped moving and started hovering in one place.

"It's JUROR!"

Three people jumped out of the helicopter with parachutes: JUROR, his mother, AUGUR, and his father, DOLOR. They made it safely to the ground without any trouble, took off their parachutes, and began to walk to the entrance.

The crowd made room for them. No one was foolish enough to try and steal the Golden Ticket. The day before, while being interviewed, a crazed man had tried to attack the final winner and steal his ticket. Before he could take the ticket or cause any real harm, chocolate bullets came from the sky and entered his head in a way that chocolate normally didn't.

It was true that there were many people in the crowd who would have decided that they were fine stealing from a child if it meant they could have a Golden Ticket. But it was also true that none of these people wanted chocolate in their brains.

In recognition of the day's importance, JUROR was even more unfinished than he usually was. Both of his shoelaces were untied instead of only his right, and he wasn't wearing socks on either foot. The temporary rhinoceros tattoo on his forehead was beginning to fade.

JUROR's mother and father were thin and hairless. They were covered with small open sores and bruises, effects of the horrible cancers that were slowly killing them and the chemotherapy they had once began. They had both received _some_ treatment, although they each had stopped it prematurely for the purposes of art.

AUGUR and DOLOR had been married for many years, but they split up after JUROR was born with his father taking sole custody.

Their marriage had been horrible. They were both bankers and for most of their lives had cared about nothing aside from money. They never took days off and always looked forward to foreclosing on homes and small businesses and orphanages. On their wedding day, both of them kept wishing that everybody would shut up and finish their cake so they could both get back to work. They hadn't even loved or liked each other, and it only got worse as time went on. They saw each minute they spent with each other as a minute they weren't at the bank.

After JUROR was born, this didn't change, and they amicably decided they would get a divorce so they could both be rid of each other. JUROR's dad took custody but had him raised by a maid, so he never saw either of his parents from the ages of one to five.

When his art career took off DOLOR decided to pay him another visit, coming to see one of his new gallery exhibitions. At first he had only come with the idea that his son's talent might be a good way to make money, but as soon as he saw the paintings he felt something in his heart sizzlegasp. He stared at them all for one straight week without speaking or eating or sleeping.

He called AUGUR and told her to come and see it. She said no, so he told her he'd give her all the money he had. After she flew down and saw her son's art, her heart sizzlegasped too.

After that they gave away most of their money to their maid and sent her away, got remarried, and began spending all of their time with each other and their son. JUROR was a smart young man and even though at first he thought they were trying to trick him, he eventually realized they were being sincere and figured that he would try giving them a chance. So they became a real loving family. They believed in what he was doing so much that they began incorporating Truncatism into their lives the same way he did.

They went on plenty of day trips together in between JUROR's art exhibitions, to museums and zoos and the innermost chambers of active nuclear reactors (JUROR had been busy that day with an exhibit, so they had gone without him). They never ran any deer over but they totally would have been open to it if it had happened.

JUROR was happy that his parents were supporting his art, and even more happy that they got along so well compared to how they were when he was little. But sometimes - and he felt guilty for even thinking it - when his parents were hugging each other or telling each other about their day or regurgitating large solidified chunks of black blood or pieces of their stomach lining during family dinner, he thought they might have been misapplying certain aspects of Truncatism and what it was intended to represent.

His parents felt extremely guilty because of the way they had ignored him when he was younger, and he could see that. He knew that they were trying to overcompensate by involving themselves in something they didn't completely understand. He wanted to tell them that they didn't need to push themselves and that he wasn't holding any grudges against them, but it was hard to muster up the courage to say it. He didn't want to hurt them and send the message that he didn't appreciate it or love him. They were trying so hard.

The three of them made it to the red carpet that had been laid out for them and stopped right in front of the gate, and JUROR decided to end that train of thought. He told himself that it was for the purposes of art.

The crowd had already turned away from the three of them to focus on the large pillar of smoke that had appeared in the crowd. Nobody had to guess who it was.

Mahuika Jewel walked forward and her parents followed, Mr. Jewel in the middle of a horrible coughing fit. It was not possible for anyone in the crowd to describe the way Mahuika looked, but it was possible for them to note the way that she walked and moved, and they all did.

Her eyes faced forward and never back or to the side. If she needed to see something she wasn't already staring at, she would turn her entire head instead of only moving her eyes, as if she were a tarsier. Whenever she took a step, her legs and arms moved without rhythm, structure, or purpose. They slumped down and wobbled aimlessly and every time they managed to carry her even a small step forward it appeared to be a true miracle.

Her pen was always carried in her right hand and held against her hip or her mouth and never anywhere else. When she brought it up to inhale or occasionally to reload it with more wax she moved with such speed that it could only register as a fast blur.

Mr. and Mrs. Jewel were chubby and well-groomed. They both were miserable and it showed on their faces. They had five daughters and Wonka had picked the worst one. It wasn't fair at all.

Mahuika vaped. JUROR tried to greet her by extending a hand for her to shake, but she did not offer hers. He pulled it back quickly and tried to play it off like he had been the one not to finish the handshake for the purposes of art but it was super obvious that it hadn't gone down that way and he spent the next several minutes having an internal panic attack and praying that no one had seen it.

Next came the sixth winner. He was alone.

One man in the crowd booed as he approached the gate. The boy stopped and stared at him. Everyone else did, too. The man realized that they wanted an explanation.

"You're messing with the order," said the man. "There's a poetic symmetry to all this and you've gone and _ruined _it all by coming here this early."

Someone punched the man in the back of the head and he fell to the floor. No one complained. Nobody was going around hunting poets or feeding them to crocodiles but that didn't mean they were liked.

"I don't know why he came here with the expectation of hearing poetry," said a woman in the crowd. "He was clearly wrong to have done that."

The boy ignored everyone and stood on the carpet with Mahuika and JUROR.

"Hello," said JUROR. "You must be Ch-"

"Chili," said Chili. "My name is Chili Floss."

JUROR looked confused, but he shrugged and stuck out another hand. Chili didn't shake it.

JUROR prematurely ended the conversation. "For the purposes," he muttered to himself. He vowed to stop trying.

Chili was angry again. There had been a short time where he had something he chose to call a revelation after he won the Golden Ticket and found his last living relative dead where he hadn't felt angry. But it hadn't lasted long, and he was right back to being angry again, and more than ever. He wanted to hurt people.

It had not been his fault when the man attacked him and was shot dead as Ned was interviewing him. But he liked it, he had said to himself. He probably even wanted it to happen again.

After that came Keerthi and her family, Mr. and Mrs. Ahir. They were all happy and emotionally secure, so there was very little about them that was interesting to talk about. Keerthi had always made friends by walking up to the first person she saw and going straight ahead and introducing herself. It was awkward at first, but pushing through that had almost always resulted in her making a new chum.

"Hello," Keerthi said to Chili. "It's nice to meet you."

"I want you to die," said Chili.

"Oh," said Keerthi, who realized that making friends must have been very different in either England or America, wherever she was. She petted Chetan and whispered to him that she was sure she would figure it all out by the end of the contest.

Everyone waited in silence after that until the ground began to shake several minutes later. Several million crabs flooded through the crowd, forming a literal wave that moved without harming anyone beneath it, Tide Honey riding on top. She was wearing the same suit she was during her interview, and both of her arms were outstretched. Her head was tilted down. Nobody could see it, but she was smiling.

The crabs dropped her off, and they all scuttled off, two large ones staying behind.

One was Jeremy, who snipped and snapped.

One was Janice, Jeremy's crab wife, who snapped and snipped.

Keerthi introduced herself to the only person who was still willing to be friendly and asked why she had brought shellfish instead of parents.

"Because," said Tide. "My mom is an ugly nerd, and all she cares about are books! And my dad is a smelly dork, and all he cares about is…"

Tide stopped but not for the purposes of art. She would have finished her sentence honestly, but she remembered that the answer was something that might have made some people want to feed her father to an enormous crocodile. She was angry at her father, but she didn't want him to be swallowed up by anything that wasn't guilt.

"Science," she lied.

"Oh," said Keerthi. "I'm sorry to hear that. I was never any good in my science classes."

"I want you to die," said Chili.

"You already told me," said Keerthi. "Um. I don't want you to die, if that changes anything, Ch-"

"Chili," said Chili. "My name is Chili Floss. I want you to die. You are lazy and rotten and ugly. You are worthless. Die."

"No," said Keerthi, who had both the self-confidence to defend herself and the sympathy necessary to understand that Chili was probably going through something and that she didn't need to take any of it personally. "I like being alive."

Chill balled up his fists and angrily kicked at the floor. His first plan had failed. He didn't understand it! He told her that she was worthless. Why did she still want to be alive? Didn't she understand that she was lazy and rotten and ugly and that nobody would ever love her and that she didn't deserve love anyway? What was wrong with her?

Keerthi ignored Chili and turned to the others.

"Hello, Mahuika. It's nice to meet you. I heard that you vape."

"I vape," said Mahuika.

"She vapes," said Mrs. Jewel.

"She vapes," said Mr. Jewel.

"Do you do anything aside from vaping? I'm sure there's more to you than that," said Keerthi.

Mahuika kept quiet and blew out a big puff of smoke. Keerthi coughed. It smelled like lemons.

"Oh my god," shouted a woman in the crowd. "What in the world is that?"

Far off in the distance, a speck appeared. It rose up and fell to the ground in a pattern of long arcs, going up and down over and over as if it were a basketball being slowly bounced against the pavement. Every time it went up, it became a little larger, and soon everyone realized that the speck was heading towards them. Eventually it became clear that the speck was actually three specks, and those three specks bounced one final time to land on the red carpet with the other five winners.

Two of those three specks were being held by the one in the middle, which set them down gently on the ground. They were Mr. and Mrs. Lau, whose stomach had shrunk since her interview with Ned. They were both smiling.

They were the only ones.

The top of it stood eleven feet above three feet beneath the ground and it was as wide as something that was one meter wider than an object with no width. The body was made up of a transparently orange gelatinous substance encased inside a hard durable plastic. It had bones, muscles, and organs, all fashioned out of a combination of metals, plastics, and artificially grown human tissue. It had four eyes, all pitch-black and triangle-shaped, and no mouth. It had tall ears and a long tail and it stood on two feet, although it hunched so far forward that all six of its claws were dragging against the carpet. It had a sealed pouch which was reinforced with clear palladium.

There was a baby inside the pouch, floating inside of liquid. He was connected to many wires.

"See," said Tide. "You have so many great sea creatures you could have taken inspiration from for this. Starfish. Octopuses. Sea horses. And instead you go with a kangaroo. It's lazy. You're lazy."

"I don't think kangaroos have six arms," said Keerthi.

"No," said Lim, through his suit. His voice sounded the way good chocolate tasted when fed to a baby inside of a mechanical spider-kangaroo who was using a voice synthesizer. "But my Taranturoo does."

Lim Lau was proud of himself. He was the most evolved human on the planet and was as perfect as perfect could be. He understood why everyone was jealous of him. It was very hard for lesser people to see someone who was better than they ever could be from the start. It must have been unbearable for them, so he had already resolved not to hold it against them.

He was not insecure about anything. And anyone who thought that only did because they were not as smart as he was.

"Does it hurt?" asked Keerthi. "All those wires look like they're making your little face scrunch up."

"No," said Lim, who had no problem taking the time to explain how his Taranturoo suit worked. He made sure to talk slowly so all the less advanced children could follow along. "Right now, my central nervous system can only feel what my Taranturoo body does. I hear with his ears and see with his eyes."

"Wow," said Keerthi. "You are a smart baby."

"Yes," said Lim. "I am."

"He is as intelligent as he is because of all the Chopin we had him listen to," said Mrs. Lau. "Maybe some of it was the gene modification, but it mostly came down to Chopin in the end. Even the worst classical music is wonderful for stimulating growing baby brains. Even when those brains are lazy and have terrible taste in music."

"He loves Chopin," said Mr. Lau.

"I don't love Chopin," said Lim.

"You do," said Mrs. Lau, sadly shaking her head. "I don't like Chopin, and neither does your father, because we have good taste. But you love Chopin. You always have."

"I don't," said Lim, stomping his Taranturoo foot. "Stop it. You promised you wouldn't do this."

"You are young and foolish," said Mr. Lau. "Please stop with this silly lie about you not finding the unimaginative trite musical creations of Frédéric Chopin to be anything other than your favorite sounds in the whole world. No one is upset at you for having horrible taste. But you must be truthful about it. Your dishonesty is lazy."

Lim folded his many arms together and mumbled to himself, and all conversation died off.

There was only one person who needed to come now, and they were all waiting for him. The crowd and the winners stood quietly as the minutes and the hours passed by. There was the sense that they were all becoming a part of history. Sometimes someone would snip or snap or announce that they vaped but for the most part it was nothing but dead silence.

"You know," said Keerthi, who had been thinking to herself. "The phrase dead silence is silly. Wouldn't dead silence be noise?"

"Shut up," said Chili.

One full hour passed with nothing happening. But then the clock struck 12:17 and a bell rang out of the building closest to the locked gate. The crowd cheered as the doors opened.

Mr. Charles Bucket looked no different from many old men. He had long gray blonde hair and a thick mustache and beard. He was skinny and he wore a tall top hat. He was wearing glasses or a monocle, and his breath smelled like hamburgers or fish and chips.

He had a cane in his right hand. He slowly walked down the stairs and to the gate door where all the winners and their guardians were waiting for him. He was frowning. Every time he took a step it seemed as if it was painful for him.

When he made it close enough to the gate, he pulled a small gun out of his pocket, put the barrel of it into his mouth, and pulled the trigger. His body collapsed to the floor and blood spilled out on the carpet, which thankfully for the cleaners was already red.

Everyone except Mahuika and Jeremy and Janice screamed and jumped back.

"Oh my god," said Mr. Jewel.

"Why would he do," said AUGUR.

"I vape," said Mahuika.

Five seconds later Mr. Bucket did an octuple backflip out of the door he had come out before, launching himself forty feet into the air before landing on his body and excitedly throwing his arms in the air. He waited for everyone to stop crying and screaming before he spoke.

"Everyone," announced Mr. Bucket. "I was merely rusing you. It was only a robot. I am the real Charles Bucket! If I really wanted to bite the bullet, I would have chosen a much tastier one, I assure you."

Mr. and Mrs. Ahir grabbed Keerthi's hands and began to walk back the way they came. Mr. Bucket frowned.

"Where are you going?" he shouted.

"Away," said Mr. Ahir.

"You are a bad person," said Mrs. Ahir. "It is wrong to pretend to kill yourself in front of children."

"And a baby, even," added Mr. Ahir.

"It wasn't that bad," said Lim. "Once you've experienced your own birth, there isn't much that can traumatize you."

Keerthi broke free of her parents grasp and stopped walking.

"Mom, Dad," she said. "I know that you only want to leave because you're worried about me, and I appreciate that.I know how it looks, and I know Mr. Bucket might appear to be a little unconventional. But I can do this. Please let me try. We can do it together."

"No," said Mr. Bucket. "You cannot. Not together. Looking at you now, counting you all on my fingers… together with the guardians, there are simply too many characters for any reasonable person to remember. The children will have to come in alone. You may pick up what remains of them after the tour."

"But the ticket said that we could take two guardians with us," said Keerthi.

"To the entrance, yes! And aside from Angry Orphan Boy over there everyone managed that much. But the six of you will need to enter my factory by yourselves."

"Please? Mom? Dad?" asked Keerthi.

Mr. and Mrs. Ahir looked at their daughter whom they loved very much and who almost never asked for anything and at Mr. Bucket, who was tap dancing on top of a perfect replica of his own corpse, and at each other.

"No," they said, pulling Keerthi away into the crowd.

"Oh well," said Mr. Bucket. "But that's why I asked for six. Okay! Everyone else, say your goodbyes and come forward! Don't worry about showing me the Golden Tickets, I don't care, no one cares, we know who you are already. We've got so much to do! So much to see! A world of pure imagination and limitless discovery awaits us all! In the doors we go, we go, we go!"

Mr. Bucket pressed a button on his coat, opening the metallic gates the children were standing in front of, before reverse backflipping back into the darkness of the factory doors he had initially come out of.

The doors began to slowly close.

"I suggest the five of you hurry, said Mr. Bucket. "And only the five of you, please. Don't make my drones overwork themselves. Now! Come, quick! These doors will only be opening once today."

JUROR gave half of a hug to his mother and half of a hug to his father and ran through the door.

Mahuika vaped and shambled through the door.

Tide snipped and snapped in Jeremy's direction and ran inside.

Lim told his parents that he didn't like Chopin, slammed his tail against the ground, and hopped inside.

Chili said nothing, but took a quick glance at the corpse as he made his way to the door. It did not look like a robot.

The doors closed half of the way, three quarters of the way, four-fifths of the way… and then Keerthi pushed through the crowd, ignoring the loud screams of her mother and father, and squeezed her way inside.

It was easier to ask for forgiveness than permission, she once heard.


	9. The Contract

JUROR, Mahuika Jewel, Tide Honey, Lim Lau, Chili Floss, and Keerthi Ahir were all standing still inside a locked room. The room was completely dark, as well as large enough to produce a galloping echo whenever someone spoke. Chili couldn't see anything.

Only Mr. Bucket was walking around, since no one else wanted to melt.

"Again, everyone, I do apologize," shouted Mr. Bucket, who was far away from the others. "This is not at all how I was hoping to begin the tour. And I don't think I need to repeat myself, but please do not touch the walls. I do not want any of you to be lit on fire right now."

"Or ever," added Keerthi.

"Sure," said Mr. Bucket.

"Wait," said Lim. "Before you said that we would melt if we touched the walls. Melting isn't the same as being lit on fire."

"Shut up," said Chili.

"Well," said Mr. Bucket. "It's both, actually. In this room, there are more than ten million buttons on the walls, and each of them does something different to the person who presses it. One button makes you explode, and one lights you on fire, and one covers you in very delicious vanilla acid that makes your skin dissolve on contact, and one pushes a licorice spear into your throat, and so on."

"Why would you have a room like that?" asked Keerthi. "You don't really want to hurt people, do you?"

"Heavens no," said Mr. Bucket. "I hope you haven't been listening to all those terrible people who like to spread all those lies about me. You create _one_ bioweapon that ends up inadvertently starting _one _measly world war and people today never let you hear the end of it. But no. I would never want to harm anyone."

"Liar," said Chili. "You wouldn't have this room if you didn't."

"Why," said Mr. Bucket, "That is ridiculous. This room is for personal protection."

"The drones aren't enough?" asked JUROR. "I find."

"The drones can be extremely helpful," said Mr. Bucket. "As some of you can personally attest to. But as amazing as they are, they aren't enough to protect my wonderful chocolate factory. We live in a world with many smart and capable people, and I'm sure many of them are grublespacked to get their hands on my inventions. Because of that, I had to design my factory very carefully. There are several ways to _leave_ this factory… but only one entrance, and it is carefully protected, as you can see."

"I can't see anything," said Tide. "I thought that was the point. It's darker than the bottom of a trench in here."

"No," said Mr. Bucket. "It is much darker. Every surface inside this room is coated with Wonkablack."

"Wonkablack?" asked Keerthi.

"Yes," said Mr. Bucket. "One of my favorite inventions. I was reading the newspaper one morning and they mentioned that someone had invented a material that absorbed 99.965% of light. It was caliginous! It was dimdratty! It was tenebristastic! But still, I thought to myself. Only 99.965? I knew I could do it better, and I had to! So I packed as many chocolate microfibers as I could and mixed it together with a long list of very toxic but no less tasty ingredients, and soon I had done it! Wonkablack absorbs 99.9999999994% of light! You couldn't find a darker dark anywhere outside of a black hole."

"Sure," said Lim. "But how do we leave?"

"There is one button that doesn't incinerate or decimate or obliterate or destructicate us," said Mr. Bucket. "I am going around right now and placing my finger on each button to try and recognize it by feeling. The one I am touching now, for example, would mechanically replace all the bones in our bodies with rock candy."

"Please do not press it," said Keerthi.

"Fear not," Mr. Bucket. "I will only press the button that leads us forward. And to apologize for the delay, I will allow each of you to ask one question, which I will answer."

"One question?" asked Chili. "That's it?"

"Yes," said Mr. Bucket. "Only one. Now, for the other five?"

"Go fuck yourself."

"If you had told me an hour ago, maybe, but not now."

"Do you vape?" asked one of the six children who knows it could have been anyone.

Chili smelled grapes.

"No," said Mr. Bucket. "I don't vape. Do you, Mahuika?"

"I vape," she answered, vapingly.

"Amazing," said Mr. Bucket.

Lim spoke next.

"Why didn't you put my name on the website? When I won, you put question marks instead of my first initial. Was it because I wasn't born yet?"

"No," said Mr. Bucket. "When I was young, everyone at school called me Starving Cabbage Soup Lad, which I disliked. A bully even went and sent in false paperwork to the government having it legally changed to that, which only made it much worse. I didn't want to list anyone's legal name if they didn't want to be called by it, so I sent my PicoWonkites into your brains and looked up the name you wanted to be called the most. At the time, you were too busy enjoying Chopin to have picked a name so I didn't include your first initial."

"Bullshit," said Chili.

"Yeah," said Lim. "I don't like Chopin."

"Sure," said Mr. Bucket. "All of my science must have been wrong. I'm not the smartest man on the planet or anything. Thank you for correcting that."

"Stop it," said Tide. "I hate sarcasm. It's so inlandish."

"That isn't a proper question," said Mr. Bucket. "When you ask a question where the answer is expected to be yes or no, your intonation should change when you mention the auxiliary verb. There was no change in pitch in your voice as you spoke, so I could not possibly be expected to know what you intended on asking about. You must stress what is needing to be stressed."

"It wasn't even a question," said Tide.

"That isn't any better," Mr. Bucket. "And even if it was, don't be greedy and try to snatch up two."

"Do you have any good advice for me if I want to stay safe while I'm here?" asked JUROR.

"Yes," said Mr. Bucket. "Tie your shoes."

"I meant good advice as it specifically applies to being inside your factory," said JUROR.

"It is," said Mr. Bucket. "You might trip on something."

"That isn't what," said JUROR.

"I vape," said Mahuika.

"No, Mahuika. It's Keerthi's turn. She can ask her question, and then I will press the button that will either send us into the next room or painfully squish our bodies into malt balls."

Alive silence filled the room. Chili realized that she was trying to be careful about what she asked, so he told her what to say. Everyone else did too.

"Ask him why you are such a useless moron."

"Ask him."

"Ask him if he is open to considering the idea that the Ocean may in fact be god."

"Ask him why he likes making up stuff about me liking Chopin."

"I vape."

"Mr. Bucket," Keerthi finally said. "Why did you hold this contest?"

"The answer is simple," said Mr. Bucket. "Okay, everyone. I'm going to press the button now. If it does turn out to be the malt balls, I apologize in advance for killing all of us. I can promise that in case that happens we will at least be very delicious."

"Wait," said Keerthi. "You didn't answer the question, and you promised that you would."

"I promised that I would give you an answer," said Mr. Bucket. "I never promised that it would be truthful or good or satisfying or helpful. An answer is only a reaction to a question. I reacted, so that was your answer."

Chili heard the sound of a button being pressed, followed by gears turning.

"Oh," said Mr. Bucket. "I'm pretty sure those are the malt ball gears. Sorry, everyone."

The floor beneath Chili opened up, and they all fell down.

**_W_**

"Good news, everyone," said Mr. Bucket. "Those were not the malt ball gears."

They had all landed on a pile of cotton candy pillows in a room that was much smaller and brighter than the one they had been dropped from. The top of Lim's Taranturoo almost touched the ceiling. The walls were made of wood, and a small fireplace quietly roasted in the corner. It resembled the office a lawyer might have.

There was one door. On the wall opposite to it hung a giant piece of paper. It was a contract. The words were too small to be read by human eyes, and there were seven blank lines underneath them.

"I read about this," said Keerthi. "Both of them mentioned it. He made them sign a massive contract before they entered... but it doesn't make any sense here. You own the country, Mr. Bucket. You make all the laws. We couldn't sue you if we wanted to."

"Shut up," said Chili.

"Again, this is only for my personal protection. I don't want any of you getting all whiny later on. Now please sign on the dotted line, if you would. Use big letters."

"The line isn't dotted," said Tide. "But whatever."

Tide picked up a pen off the desk and signed her name.

TIDE HONEY

"Idiot," said Lim. "Signing something you didn't read."

"There must be a million words on that monster. Look. It's his country, his rules. If he wants to kill us, he'll do it, contract or no contract. That was a risk I was willing to take. Ocean will protect me."

"Thank you," said Mr. Bucket. "But please do not sign your name like that. You are using the pens wrong."

"What? How do you want me to sign?"

"I will show you."

Mr. Bucket took another pen off the table and jammed it hard into his index finger. Blood began to run down his thumb. He took it and spelled out his own name on one of the lines in big letters.

STARVING CABBAGE SOUP LAD

"I thought you didn't like that name," said Keerthi.

"I don't. But this is a legal contract, and we must all use our real names. And blood. It is very important that we use blood while signing our names. This is a blood contract."

"Why don't you change it back?" asked Keerthi. "You are an autocratic king. Surely you could change your name back if you wanted to."

"I am much too busy," said Mr. Bucket.

"But you would only have to say it," said Keerthi. "Then it would be law."

"Again, very busy. But thank you for the terrible legal advice. Now please hurry up and sign."

Tide Honey took her finger and sliced it against a sharp point on her helmet, creating a small cut. Mr. Bucket winced. With it she resigned her name in the same spot with blood.

Keerthi signed the contract next. She used a pen to cut open her finger. Chili hated watching how long it took for her to draw out the smallest possible amount of blood. He had wanted to see her injured, but much more seriously and at a much faster pace.

KEERTHI AHIR

"Wonderful," said Mr. Bucket. "Wait. Baby. What are you doing?"

The four black triangular eyes of the Taranturoo were shooting out a green light that was scanning the contract.

"I am having Taranturoo analyze the contract and abbreviate to me what is important. It will only be a moment."

The light turned off.

"There we are," said Lim. "Let me see... Okay. Not surprising. It's literally all gibberish."

"Gibberish?" asked Keerthi.

"Most of this isn't even real words," explained Lim. "Half of it is a list of prime numbers and a guide on farming and preserving cucumbers that he translated into binary. The other half is a lengthy scientific paper about something called a "Sudanese Blister Beetle" that he took and translated between German and Italian about fifty times over until it became unrecognizable, and then he just copied and pasted the result."

"Um," said Mr. Bucket. "Well. Shut up."

"Not that it matters," said Lim, "But I have no problem signing it, that being the case."

Lim held up his claw to the contract, which sprayed out a concentrated line of red mist that spelled his name.

LIM LAU

"Taken from my heel," said Lim.

Mahuika went next. She burnt the tip of a finger with her vape pen until it bled, not letting it cauterize.

I VAPE

"That isn't your legal name," said Mr. Bucket.

"I vape," she said, crossing out her last answer and trying again.

MAHUIKA JEWEL

Chili went next. He used his teeth and tore at his thumb.

CHILI FLOSS

"No," said Mr. Bucket. "Your legal name."

"That is my real name. I'm Chili Floss," said Chili Floss.

"No, it isn't. It isn't your legal name and it isn't even the name my Wonkites detected you wanting to be called. Chili Floss is a silly ridiculous pretend name you made up," said Mr. Bucket, who was once given a chocolate factory by a man named Willy Wonka.

"My name is Chili Floss," said Chili. "I don't have another name."

"Maybe he can change it," said Keerthi.

"Shut up," said Chili, turning to her. "And die. You are useless and I hate you and we all hate you."

"I was only trying to help," said Keerthi.

"Don't," said Chili.

He turned back to Mr. Bucket.

"This is a made up country and you are a made up king. So I am going to change my name legally. I hereby change it to Chili Floss."

"You can't!" exclaimed Mr. Bucket. "The law is not that simple. There is an official process for changing your name, and you wouldn't be allowed to do it anyway."

"Why not?" asked Chili.

"You aren't a citizen of Wonkaland. You are a citizen of either America or England," said Mr. Bucket. "You can only change your legal name in a country you are a citizen in."

"How do I become a citizen of Wonkaland?" asked Chili.

Mr. Bucket grumbled. "You have to ask me."

"Make me a citizen of Wonkaland."

Mr. Bucket sighed and angrily pulled a passport out of his coat pocket before tossing it at Chili.

"There," he said. "Congratulations. Please remember to pay your taxes."

"Now, what is the process for changing my name?"

Mr. Bucket sighed again. "You have to say it five times in a row and touch your nose with your pinky finger."

Chili did so, legally becoming Chili Floss.

"There," said Chili.

"Wait," said Keerthi. "Please make me a citizen of Wonkaland too."

"I'm sorry," said Mr. Bucket. "Due to a massive influx in immigration, we are not currently accepting applications for naturalization."

"But you let him do it," she said.

"That was before the population doubled," Mr. Bucket explained.

"Don't let her in," said Chili. "I don't want my tax dollars going to leeches like her."

Keerthi frowned.

"And last of all, JUROR. Go ahead, JUROR. Please signed the contract," said Mr. Bucket.

JUROR looked at the line where his name would go and frowned.

"Um," he said.

"Yes, yes," said Mr. Bucket. "The purposes of art. But I need you to do this and finish, or you will not be allowed to continue your tour. You must write your name."

JUROR looked away from the contract and frowned.

"You can't read," said Keerthi. "I remember your interview. You can't write either, can you?"

JUROR shook his head.

"Well, a shame," said Chili. "But we shouldn't waste anyone's time. Mr. Bucket is busy. Bye JUROR."

"No," said Keerthi.

Keerthi had JUROR stab his finger, and walked with him to the paper. With her own finger, she mimicked the way he needed to move in order to write down the letters.

Chili hated her. She was helping JUROR, not because she wanted to be nice but because she knew it was going to annoy him.

It took a minute, but it was soon finished.

JUROR

"No," said Mr. Bucket. "That won't do. It must be his _legal_ name. I am sick of saying it."

"Has the naturalization process opened up again?" asked Keerthi.

"No," said Mr. Bucket.

They began work on JUROR's full legal name. He said it multiple times, and they worked to write it down. JUROR could only say his name, and Keerthi had trouble with the spelling, so she did her best to guess when directing him on how to write it.

It took eight minutes.

JEXSIMIL UCKSIO ROCKA DEH OZODBECK REVELLEZ

"No," said Mr. Bucket. "That is not his legal name."

They tried again. Due to all the time it took for JUROR to copy her and squeeze extra blood out of his finger, it took another eight minutes.

JECKSIMMEL OOKZIO ROAKAH DAH OZODBACK REVELAS

"No," said Mr. Bucket. "That is also not his legal name."

They kept trying. Each time they did it took another eight minutes and JUROR had to open another finger, and Chili got angrier.

JACKSIMAL UOIXIO ROCA DI OZODBAK REVELESS

JECK-SIMIL UCKZIOH ROCEH DES OZODBEK REAVELOS

JEXZIMEAL OKIO WROKIO DEEAE OZUIDBAEIOUCK REVALESZSZ

"She isn't even trying anymore," said Chili. "She's only trying to annoy us. Can we cut this short? He can't sign the contract, so he can't come on the tour."

"He is trying," said Mr. Bucket. "Until he signs it correctly or gives up, I will let him continue."

"Again," he said. "She's doing it to bother us."

"I'm trying my best," said Keerthi. "I'm not super familiar with these names. I don't think anyone here could do this, though."

"Liar," said Chili. "Die."

"I'm not-"

"No," said Lim. "You're a liar. And you are trying to annoy us. Me, specifically, I would assume, because you are wagering that I will get frustrated with your lack of progress, see both your terrible guesses and unwillingness to quit, and give you the right answer, which I do have saved on Taranturoo's hard drive, presumably out of a desire to show off my intelligence and/or continue on with the contest as soon as possible."

"Um," said Keerthi. "No?"

"Lie detection is messy and unreliable, but Taranturoo's picking up on all the signs that would confirm it, so I'm going to assume that I hit the nail on the head. Here's the problem with your situation: JUROR needs to sign this in his own blood. And he has less of that to give away than I do patience."

Chili hated Lim, but not as much as he did Keerthi, so it was fun to watch him call her a liar.

Keerthi stayed quiet for a long time. Chili saw clearly that she had given up, but right when he was going to tell her to die again, she opened her mouth.

"Wait," said Keerthi. "Mr. Bucket, does it have to be our own blood? I don't think you said that it does."

"Of course not," said Mr. Bucket. "I would never ask children to hurt themselves. I thought I made it clear with my example that you all were meant to have been stabbing _me _for ink, but you were all having so much fun with it I didn't want to interrupt."

"It buys you more time, but not enough," said Lim. "Even if you chipped in yourself, with all the possible combinations all three of you would pass out long before you guessed it."

"Oh," said Mr. Bucket. "Certainly not. As soon as I start to feel dizzy, I'll take one of my Wonka Bloody Butterscotches, which I always keep on my person for safety reasons. One nibble provides up to three times as much hematic goodness as a single transfusion! Coming soon in delicious type O nega-"

"Stop," said Lim. "Stop."

Lim printed out a piece of paper from his tail and let it fall to the floor. Keerthi picked it up, read it, and handed it to JUROR, who began to slowly copy it.

"Thank you, Lim," said JUROR. "You too, Keerthi. I appreciate."

"You're welcome," said Keerthi.

"I hope all of you die," said Chili.

"I vape," said Mahuika.

JEKSSIMIL UXIO ROCHA DE OZODBEK REVELES

"There we are," said Mr. Bucket.

The door leading to the next room opened. It was a slide.

"Onwards! Or downwards, really. It's all downhill from here."


	10. The Failure Room

The group had arrived at a new door. Before Mr. Bucket opened it, he decided to see how everyone was enjoying themselves.

"How did everyone like the Slide Room?"

"Um," said Keerthi. "It was only a regular slide, wasn't it? Other than being so large. Not that I disliked it! I had never been on a slide big enough to be used by a Taranturoo."

"Not just any slide! It was made of chocolate," explained Mr. Bucket. "It's all part of my new edible playground line of Wonkastructure. Imagine! You will go out to play in the park, and you will say-"

"I have never played in a park," said Lim.

"Well," said Mr. Bucket. "You are a baby. Babies are mostly known for crying and pooping and committing international war crimes. I am sure the rest of you have played in parks."

"There isn't much artistic value in," said JUROR.

"I'm always busy making sure everyone knows the Ocean is god, so I haven't had the chance," said Tide.

"My house is inside a park," said Chili. "It doesn't have a playground."

"I vape," said Mahuika. "No one is allowed to vape in parks."

Mr. Bucket sighed. "Okay. But normal children do play in parks, and they will love this! They will be sliding or climbing or bar-monkeying and they will start to get hungry. But they won't need to take a break! No, they will snap off a delicious piece of brick wafer or vanilla glue and continue on with full bellies and high spirits."

"But won't they eventually eat all of it?" asked Keerthi.

"Of course," said Mr. Bucket. "And then the city will order another. More candy for the children, and more profit for me. It works wonderfully."

"But it would melt," said Lim.

"Nonsense! He didn't always use it, but Mr. Wonka himself had already invented anti-melting chocolate technology before I was born! I have only improved the process since! My Wonkastructure can withstand snow or sun and taste absolutely budsplattering while doing it."

"But it would be very unhygienic," said Keerthi. "Children would be getting their dirty shoes all over it. Germs would be everywhere."

"And bugs," said Lim. "Bugs would swarm them and gobble everything up."

"You children have little faith in me," said Mr. Bucket. "Of course I know about that! That is why the chocolate used in the Wonkastructure is mixed with a special antibiotic poison. It kills germs and bugs and squirrels instantly!"

Keerthi frowned. "But wouldn't that also-"

"Let us not get bogglecrumped in the details," said Mr. Bucket. "We still have so, so, so much to see and do! There is the room with the pink lemonade cows, and the room with the yellow lemonade cows, and even the room with the blue lemonade cows!"

"Quite the variety," said JUROR.

Mr. Bucket started to open the door and did, but not all the way. Once it was half-open he held it in place and turned to the children.

"Children," Mr. Bucket said. "And Baby too. This applies to all of you. I have one important rule I need to share before we continue on. This is a chocolate _factory_, not a chocolate _store._ This means that this is a place where candies are made. Not where they are bought. Do you understand the difference?"

"I vape," said Mahuika.

"It means, in plain American or British English, that not everything in here is ready for consumption," said Mr. Bucket. There will be many delicious sweets and fizzies and yumgappers for you to feast upon, but I will always tell you when this is the case. If you eat anything, or drink anything, or take anything that you do not have permission to eat or drink or take, I will have to immediately escort you out of my factory. I know this won't happen, since you are all intelligent and polite young people, but I must say it anyway."

"Why didn't you write that on the contract?" asked Lim.

"I did," said Mr. Bucket. "It was on the back. Also! I am aware of the cruelty and strictness of my words. It is horrible to tease people with what they cannot have, especially children, who are worth almost as much as regular people. So! If you happen to decide that you absolutely positively _must_ have something that I say you cannot, I will still end your tour, but you may have it. But only one."

"I want the chocolate facto-"

"With some exceptions, Chili," said Mr. Bucket. "You may not have me, or my chocolate factory, or any other unreasonable item. But if it is a reasonable request, I will try to accommodate you. As long as you ask in advance before trying to take something, I will tell you if it is unreasonable or not."

"Is Keerthi's life an unreasonable item?" asked Chili. He wasn't actually going to ask for it, but he thought it would be fun to say. It was. She looked sad.

"Hmm," said Mr. Bucket. "It depends on what you mean by that. Let me think about it."

"Um," said Keerthi. "Can we go into the next room?"

"Certainly," said Mr. Bucket. "And have no fears about this next room! You may eat whatever you wish to while there."

"Will we wish to?" asked Tide.

"It depends," said Mr. Bucket.

_**W**_

The next room resembled an old history museum. From the high ceiling, thousands of lights pointed down, each one shining on a different brown pedestal. The pedestals were carefully arranged in rows and columns, some large and some small but all matching in design. They all had round glass cases and plaques on them.

Chili walked over to one and looked inside of it. There was a gummy bear. He read the inscription on the plaque.

_F390 - THE LIVER-EAR GUMMY BEAR_

GROWS AN EAR IN YOUR LIVER YOU CAN HEAR FROM

DOES NOT FILL YOUR STOMACH WITH TUMORS

DOES NOT NOT NOT FILL YOUR STOMACH WITH TUMORS

"What the fuck is this?" asked Chili.

"Good question," said Mr. Bucket. "This is the Failure Room! This is where I keep all my failures. Many years ago I was browsing the web-"

"Surfing the net," said Tide.

"No," said Mr. Bucket. "I was using the computer inside the room with my cotton candy spiders, so it would have been the web. But! Yes! I was there! I was in the middle of a long creative drought and needed inspiration, and I had finally found it! There was a brilliant philanthropist who had formed his own charity - they take in injured dust mites and nurse them back to health - and he was giving a speech on how to succeed. He said that to succeed, you must fail! You will never succeed until you have failed, and if you do not fail before you succeed, then you never succeeded in the first place! In reality you failed to succeed! But since failing to succeed isn't the same as simply failing, it would fail to help you succeed! All successes only exist because of the failures that come with them!"

"I vape," said Mahuika. Chili walked over to her, snatched the vape pen out of her hand, and threw it as far as he could behind her. Her second pen reached her lips before her first touched the floor.

She vaped.

"See!" yelled Mr. Bucket. "Success born from failure! That is the only way! When I was unimportant and small like you, I had failed many times! I _was _failure! So it was only natural that I became success! But it was too much success, far too much! I used up all that failure I had built up, so I lost my passion. So! I decided! All I needed to do was make more failure, and that is what this room is!"

"Wouldn't it make more sense to show us your successes first? That is what most people," said JUROR.

"My factory has many superb sights and sounds and broken alliterations," said Mr. Bucket. "They are all amazing! But if I started with a more impressive room you would not be able to handle it! You need to adjust first. This room will help with that, since it is the one you can all best relate to."

"So the gummy bear doesn't actually work?" asked Keerthi. "It doesn't do any of the stuff it says on the plaque?"

Mr. Bucket picked up his cane and used it to scratch his forehead..

"No," said Mr. Bucket. "It's confusing. Let me explain! When I started this project, I was trying to fail so that I could succeed. But each time I failed, I found out that I had succeeded in failing. Succeeding in failing is as useless as failing to succeed, so that meant that I had failed to fail and that I wouldn't be able to ensure my success moving forward. I was stuck!"

"This is much less clever than you think it is," said Lim.

"How did you solve your problem?" asked Tide.

"It was easy!" exclaimed Mr. Bucket. "For example! Here! I set out to make a gummy bear that would help people with drinking problems. It would grow an ear in their livers! If they ever tried to give me and drink, they would be able to hear their liver scream!"

"Livers don't scream," said Lim.

"How would you know?" asked Mr. Bucket. "You don't have an ear in your liver."

"Aside from them not being sentient, I was conscious and self-aware ten minutes after my conception, and I lived next to one until my birth," said Lim. "They do not scream."

"To be fair," said Mr. Bucket. "It is difficult to hear the difference between pained shrieking and a Chopin etude. But I will take your word for it."

"So you managed to make the ears grow with the gummy bear, but since that succeeded, you failed to fail," said Keerthi. "Am I getting that right?"

"Yes," said Mr. Bucket. "But I figured out a way around it! All I needed to do was retroactively add goals to all of my successes so that they would become failures! That way I didn't even need to keep inventing. With F390, I added two goals that I knew would fail! Everything here has two failed goals and one successful goal. Which means that I finally succeeded at failing!"

"Which means that you succeeded," said Keerthi.

"Yes!" said Mr. Bucket.

"Which means that you failed," said Keerthi.

"Yes!" said Mr. Bucket.

"I vape," said Mahuika.

"Fuck you," said Chili.

"Okay," said Mr. Bucket. "Enough of that. Everyone go and enjoy my failures! Try whatever you like! You can try to guess which goal is the successful one out of the three and make a game of it."

"What about the glass?" asked JUROR.

"It is sugar glass," said Mr. Bucket. "If something isn't worth eating, it won't be worth looking through, I have always said."

"Are the pedestals failures?" asked Chili.

"No," said Mr. Bucket. "They are pedestals."

Chili started eating one of the pedestals, which were made from chocolate. Everyone else left to wander about the room.

_**W**_

Chili woke up later on the floor. His face had chocolate on it.

He stood up and tried to see if anyone was close by. Far on the other side of the room, he saw the Taranturoo standing alongside the others. He stood up and began walking towards it. Sometimes he stopped to look at one of the pedestals, read the plaque, and scoop out an extra handful of chocolate.

One pedestal had a straw inside of it.

_F1920 - THE ELECTRIC STRAW_

A STRAW THAT DRINKS FOR YOU

DOES NOT COVER YOUR TONGUE WITH TUMORS

DOES NOT EVENTUALLY REPLACE YOUR TONGUE WITH A LARGE TONGUE-LIKE TUMOR APPENDAGE

One pedestal had a small pile of popcorn.

_F49 - ANTI-POPCORN_

POPCORN THAT TURNS BACK INTO KERNELS WHEN HEATED UP

SOMETHING SOMETHING NO TUMORS

DITTO

One pedestal had a smaller pedestal inside of it which itself was growing tumors. Chili did not read the plaque.

Soon he made it to Lim, who was standing with everyone other than Mr. Bucket in front of the largest pedestal in the room. Chili gasped when he saw what was inside of it. It was a man.

He was dead. His skin was orange, and his hair was green, and he was only a little taller than Tide, who was only six. He was wearing a suit and looked like a wax sculpture.

_F1717 - CORPSE COOKIES_

AN ALMOND COOKIE THAT INSTANTLY PRESERVES A BODY WHEN FED TO IT

DOES NOT PRESERVE IT BY TURNING ALL ORGANS INTO TUMORS

DOES NOT BRING YOU BACK TO LIFE FOR A BRIEF PERIOD AND MAKE YOU WHINE LIKE A BABY ABOUT HOW MUCH YOU WANT TO DIE AND BE TOTALLY UNAPPRECIATIVE OF YOUR COOL NEW TUMOR TONGUE

"Chili," said Keerthi. "You didn't eat anything in here other than the chocolate pedestals, right?"

"No," he replied. "As much as you wish that I did."

Keerthi did not reply. Chili could tell that she was upset about him not having made a fatal mistake. He reminded himself to make his revenge against her twice as horrible as he previously would have.

"None of us did," said Tide. "It's all tumors. Everything gives you tumors."

"Where's Bucket?" asked Chili.

"Long story," said Lim. "He was here a few minutes ago, but we were talking and I pointed out how everything he invented here technically would have _already_ been a failure, since even though they did what they were supposed to they also give you tumors. He said that they wouldn't have been failures until he _specifically _added non-tumor-givingness as a prerequisite goal, and we all told him that was dumb and his success/failure conception didn't make any sense so he ran away crying."

"I chased after him," said Keerthi. "He told me to leave him alone. So we all decided to wait for him to come back. I think this is all a joke. I think he likes dark humor and is joking about all the stuff he says. Nobody would try to give anyone tumors on purpose."

"So eat something," said Chili.

"Um," said Keerthi. "I'm not that hungry."

"Taranturoo thinks you're lying," said Lim.

"I'm not," said Keerthi. "I had a big breakfast and it didn't settle well."

Chili sighed and looked at the five other children as he waited.

There was Keerthi, who he hated and hoped would die. There was also Tide and Lim and Mahuika, coincidentally all of whom he also hated and hoped would die.

There was also JUROR. Chili smiled.

"JUROR," said Chili. "Everyone is lying about the tumors. The plaques don't say anything about that. You should eat something."

"No," said JUROR.

Chili cursed himself. Why did his plans keep failing?

"So," said Tide. "While we wait. About the corpse in front of us. Nobody wants to talk about it."

"It's a fake," said Keerthi. "It must be. He's only trying to pull a prank on us. I read about the worker people he had in the books they wrote but they were making it up."

Lim scanned the body with his Taranturoo. "Nope. That is a real dead body."

"Human?" asked Tide.

"Yes," said Lim. "And filled with tumors."

"Did he vape?" asked Mahuika.

"I… don't know?" answered Lim.

"I vape," said Mahuika. She did.

"He did not vape," said Mr. Bucket, who had come back from the far side of the room. "None of them did."

"None of who?" asked Keerthi. "Mr. Bucket, who was this person?"

"His name was Roy," said Mr. Bucket. "He was an Oompa Loompa."

"An Oompa Loompa?" asked JUROR.

"Yes!" said Mr. Bucket. "Imported directly from Loompaland."

"There's no such place," said Chili.

"Of course there is! It's in the Hangdoodles."

"That isn't a place either," said Chili.

Chili had stolen many books in his life, and in doing so he discovered that there were several topics that he most enjoyed reading about. He liked reading about volcanoes, obscure diseases, and people who were suffering more than him. It didn't matter if it was fiction or non-fiction. He didn't understand why he liked reading about volcanoes, obscure diseases, and people who were suffering more than him, but he did.

He also liked maps. The book he had read more than any other was called "THE WORLD THAT WE LIVE IN", and it was a large hardcover atlas published by National Geographic. Chili liked National Geographic books and magazines, and since they could be easily found in any dumpster in the world, he never had to take a risk by stealing them.

The book had a map of every country in the world together with facts about the country. The book was published before the largest Baby War, so it had some outdated information, but he had read it at least one hundred times and memorized everything. He knew where Somalia was and that Mogadishu was its capital. He knew the population of Paris and the percent of people there that could speak German. He knew the GDP of Rome, and how much of that GDP was represented only by food. He even knew where Happiness Central was.

He also knew that there was no place called Loompaland.

"I cannot speak to your lack of education," said Mr. Bucket. "But of course there is a place called Loompaland. I have been there! As had Mr. Wonka. It was where he met the Oompa Loompas, who did great work for us both for a long time."

"So they weren't lying? You really did have small people who helped you?" asked Keerthi.

"Yes!" said Mr. Bucket. "What fantastic workers they were! How I miss them."

"He doesn't look the way she described them in her book," said Keerthi. "She said they were the size of dolls."

Mr. Bucket laughed. "Of course they were! You think there were really orange men with green hair walking around? That is what happens when you try to preserve a corpse with an almond cookie. It does not work, as you see. Any corpse preserver that makes a corpse start crying and screaming for a second death is a horrible preserver. In the future I will go with a professional taxidermist. That is a respectable profession, and has no almonds, as a bonus."

"I like almonds," said JUROR.

"That is a bad opinion," said Mr. Bucket. "But yes. Roy here was given the last one thankfully, so no one else will need to go through what he did."

"Mr. Bucket," asked Keerthi. "What happened to the rest of the Oompa Loompas?"

"I had to fire all of them, sadly. They tried to onionize."

"Don't you mean unionize?" asked Tide.

"I wish!" exclaimed Mr. Bucket. "Unions are easy to mince away. But onions! They cause nothing but tears. You see, there is nothing Oompa Loompas loved more than cocoa beans. They couldn't get enough of them! They did not want money, they did not want fancy new televisions. They only wanted cocoa beans! One day I was having them help me invent the healthiest candy in the world… it was going to have the same nutritional value of eating every fruit and vegetable at once, and it was going to taste delicious! When they were loading them all up into the machine, one of them got a whiff from the onions and so he decided to try it."

"Did he like it?" asked Keerthi.

"No," said Mr. Bucket. "He loved it! He shared it with all the others and they loved it too. Soon they asked if I would stop paying them in cocoa beans and switch over to onions. I was happy to do this, as onions are even cheaper than cocoa beans, but it came with a terrible price."

"They all got bad breath?" asked Tide. "My followers were on a seaweed craze a while back. I get that."

"No," said Mr. Bucket. "They all began whizzpopping."

"What?" asked Lim. "Because of the onions?"

Mr. Bucket frowned. "Yes. It was gross. The human body cannot handle too many onions per day. If you eat as many as they were, you are increasing your chance of whizzpopping."

"Oh," said Keerthi.

"All of those whizzpopping Oompa Loompas kept contaminating my factory! You cannot make candy when whizzpoppers are flying around! I felt terrible about it but I had to act. I asked them to stop eating the onions and go back to beans but they wouldn't hear of it. So eventually I had to let them go. Only ten Oompa Loompas still work at this factory, and I only kept them because I absolutely needed them! Although I am not sure what I am going to do with them now."

"Did the rest of them go back to Loompaland?" asked Tide.

"There is no Loompaland," said Chili. "He's a liar. Onions don't make people whizzpop. He probably killed them all and used their bones for candy."

"I didn't bring this up because there wasn't ever a good time," said Lim. "But my scans say that Mr. Bucket's bones are all made from reinforced peanut brittle. I thought that was worth mentioning."

"I know I can come off as a little nutty," said Mr. Bucket. "But I never killed any of my Oompa Loompas on purpose. To answer your question, Keerthi, some of them did. But most of them are now traveling the world together and searching for more onions and hopefully not standing close to other people in elevators."

"His blood is root beer," said Lim.

"But if you don't have Oompa Loompas, who runs your factory?" asked Keerthi.

"It runs itself," answered Mr. Bucket.

"It can't possibly," said Keerthi. "Is this place managed entirely by robots?"

"Robots? What? No," said Mr. Bucket. "You don't understand. Watch!"

Mr. Bucket walked over to Roy's pedestal, picked up his cane, and swung it at the sugar glass. It broke, and Roy's body fell to the floor in a pile. The pedestal snapped in half. The children screamed.

Mr. Bucket ignored them and pointed.

"Do not look at Roy! Look at the floor, children! The floor!"

The floor began to liquify, in the spot where Roy, the pedestal he had been on, and the broken sugar glass had landed. It all sank like quicksand into the floor and disappeared. The floor stopped wiggling and became hard again.

"Where did he go?" asked JUROR.

"I vape," said Mahuika.

"Contain your excitement," said Mr. Bucket. "There! There it is!"

At the same spot as before, the ground turned to liquid sand again, and a new pedestal began to lift out of the ground, along with Roy and a repaired glass case. Soon they were back where they had been originally in restored condition.

"All the floors and walls and ceilings in my factory can do this," said Mr. Bucket. "When they need to operate or fix something, they turn into a special gel, drag it into themselves and work on it and bring it back out. Everything is designed so that it can be operated through this method."

"Is it automatic?" asked Lim.

"Not fully," said Mr. Bucket. "I have a chip in my brain that issues commands. Most of them are scheduled but some are from when I need them to do something special, like fixing up Roy here. When I tell it what to do, the chip sends that command to the Control Center, and the Center Controller decides how to go about using the walls to do what I need it to do."

"Is that where the remaining Oompa Loompas work?" asked Keerthi.

"No," said Mr. Bucket.

"Then who does it?" she asked.

"Let me answer your question with a question," said Mr. Bucket. "This goes to all of you. What do you think should happen to people who are lazy?"

Mr. Bucket's cane rang.

"Oh!" he said. "My alarm. The time! The time! Where does it go? We must be moving along! Our next room awaits!"

He began to usher them all towards the next door. As they walked, Keerthi spoke.

"Mr. Bucket?" asked Keerthi. "Can I ask you one more question?"

"Go ahead," he said.

"I don't know if this is true, but I read that last time Mr. Wonka started the tour with a room with a chocolate river. Do you still have that?"

"No," said Mr. Bucket. "We now mix chocolate via hurricane. But I wouldn't take you there even if we did."

"Why not?" asked JUROR.

"Because it would be boring," said Mr. Bucket. "It's been done. Tours must be changed and updated! Modernization is a must! Young people today have shorter attention spans than ever."

"No we," said JUROR.


	11. The VIP Room

As they left the Failure Room, Chili and the rest of the children were surprised to find grass beneath their feet. They were standing on a small hill.

The sky was cloudy but not gr[redacted]y as it had been when the children first entered the factory. The sun was bright and strong, and it hung over miles and/or kilometers of scarped forests. There were several mountains dotting the landscape. One was four times larger than all the others, and unlike them lacked greenery.

It was windy.

Chili turned around to find that the door behind him had vanished. He walked over to the spot where it had been and swiped at air.

"Now," said Mr. Bucket. "You are all great at solving intelligent riddles. But you are all still children, so I am expecting many bad questions."

"How are we _outside?"_ asked Keerthi. "We have only gone down since the start!"

"In quality, yes," admitted Mr. Bucket. "And in location! But we are not outside. We are in the VIP Room. It is designed to make everyone inside of it _feel_ like they are outside even though they are not. I am proud of it."

"This can't be a room," said Chili. "I know what a room is, and this is not that! A room has a floor! This room has no floor!"

"The ground is a floor," said Mr. Bucket.

"It has no walls!" said Chili.

"They are special walls," said Mr. Bucket. "You can't see them or touch them, and they move, and they also aren't walls. But they are there."

"It has no ceiling!" said Chili. "You have all the holes that are in a ceiling, sure. But where is the rest of it? You can't only have the holes!"

"I don't think ceilings are supposed to have any holes," said Keerthi.

"Shut up and die," said Chili.

"I'm sure it has a ceiling," said Lim. "We aren't outside. Here."

Lim pointed one of Taranturoo's claws at the sky and shot a bullet. It went straight up.

"Why did you do that?" asked Keerthi.

"In perfect conditions, Taranturoo's artillery fire can travel about twelve-thousand feet and or however many meters that would be into the air. The round I fired has a tracker in it. I'll know how high the ceiling is once it makes contact."

"How long will that take?" asked Keerthi.

"From the moment I fired, about one minute. But…"

Lim paused.

"JUROR," said Lim. "Move away from where you are standing."

"It would be more artistic if you didn't," said Chili.

JUROR moved.

"Farther," said Lim.

"Take another step," said Chili, "And you are selling out."

JUROR sold out.

Seconds later, a controlled blast no larger than a controlled blast that was no smaller than a comparatively small controlled blast blasted controllably precisely at the space where JUROR had been standing.

"You couldn't have used a bullet that didn't explode?" asked JUROR.

"I don't have any bullets that don't explode," said Lim.

"So there's no ceiling," said Tide. "Great. Good Ocean."

"There is a ceiling!" said Mr. Bucket. "But! It does not matter. No one should ever walk into a room and worry about the floor or the walls or the ceilings. You are in the most stuporbellowing factory in the entire world! There are much better questions to be asking."

Chili bent down and started eating the grass.

"This is good," said Chili. "I've never had St. Augustine this good. Better than Fescue."

"Oh," said Mr. Bucket. "A connoisseur!"

Keerthi reached down and plucked three pieces of grass out of the dirt. She gave them a sniff before tossing them in her mouth.

She immediately spit them out. "This is just regular grass!"

"Not any grass," said Mr. Bucket. "St. Septembertine, my own blend. Goes great with cabbage soup and lint."

"People can't eat grass!" said Keerthi. "It has silica! It'll destroy your teeth! Unless… did you remove it first?"

"Why would he do that?" asked Chili. "Silica is what gives it all the flavor! This moron finally shows us one good invention and you want to ruin it. Shut up and die."

"Grass," said Lim. "Not candy grass. Grass. You built this entire room for grass."

"Delicious grass," said Mr. Bucket. "And no. It is only a side project. The VIP Room is for VIPs."

"VIPs?" asked Tide.

"Yes," said Mr. Bucket. "How else would I make my delicious WonkaCoffee?"

"WonkaCoffee?" asked Keerthi.

"Yes," said Mr. Bucket. "My delicious coffee brand! It is the greatest coffee ever made and soon will be released to the public. I was inspired by Kopi luwak."

"Kopi luwak?" asked JUROR.

"Yes," Mr. Bucket said. "That is what I said. It is rude to hear a sentence and then repeat it back in the form of a question. It is plagiarism."

"It is plagiarism?" asked Lim.

"Yes," said Mr. Bucket.

"Yes?" asked Tide.

"Yes," said Mr. Bucket.

"Yes?" asked Chili.

"Yes," said Mr. Bucket. "I am glad that the three of you can understand what I have said. Please explain it to JUROR if you can."

"That isn't," said JUROR.

"But!" said Mr. Bucket. "Yes! Yes! Kopi luwak. Do any of you know what that is?"

Nobody did.

"Ha," Mr. Bucket. "I cannot blame you! If you asked me not more than a short time ago, I would have said that children and babies and vaping teenagers should not be drinking coffee! It is gross."

"I vape," said Mahuika.

"Of course you do! When the alternative is coffee. Coffee is for boring people who hate fun. I tried it in all the ways that you can try to drink it! I tried it black! I tried it roasted! I tried it together with every drink I could think up! With milk, and with wine, and with gasoline, and even with…"

Mr. Bucket's eyes met with Chili's.

"It doesn't matter. I tried it with everything, and it was all terrible! I decided it was awful and I would never make it inside Wonkaland. But one evening I was reading a book, and it told me all about Kopi luwak."

"Who is that?" asked Keerthi.

"What! A what, not a who. It is coffee! A special coffee! Before the babies blew up Indonesia, there was an animal species there called the Asian Palm Civet. They loved coffee fruit!"

"Coffee isn't a fruit," said Tide. "It's a bean."

"Wrong!" said Mr. Bucket. "Coffee is a fruit from our planet. Coffee beans are not true beans. They are seeds found inside coffee fruits. When coffee is made ordinarily, these beans are collected and dried and ground up and mixed with hot water and drunk. But not with Kopi luwak!"

"How do they make it?" asked Keerthi.

"Shit!" said Mr. Bucket. "Shizzblotting grunkbutting asswalloping shit! The Asian Palm Civets would eat the coffee fruits and poop out the seeds! People would go and take the seeds and make coffee out of them like it was normal. They said it was delicious! They said it tasted like fresh fruit!"

"No," said Keerthi.

"Yes," said Mr. Bucket.

"No," said JUROR.

"Yes," said Mr. Bucket.

"No," said Tide.

"Yes," said Mr. Bucket.

"No," said Lim.

"Yes," said Mr. Bucket.

"I vape," said Mahuika.

Mr. Bucket laughed. "Okay," he admitted. "Nothing can get past you, Mahuika. I was making that all up. Of course coffee beans are real beans from this planet and of course no one was ever going around making coffee out of poop. I did read that in a book, but it was science fiction. Still! I did think it was worth trying!"

"So this room is filled with civets?" asked Lim.

"Not exactly," said Mr. Bucket. "Come. I will show you."

_**W**_

Mr. Bucket led the children down a hill and through the forest. Chili peeled small pieces of bark from the trees he passed and ate them as they went.

They reached a small clearing on the side of a river surrounded by bushes. In the middle of the clearing there was a large metallic cylinder partially covered by a round magnetic strip. The cylinder was hollow.

Mr. Bucket crouched down beneath the bushes and instructed the children to do the same. Everyone who was not a baby in a Taranturoo suit did this.

"Mr. Bucket," said Lim. "My Taranturoo is eleven feet above three feet beneath the ground and as wide as something that is one meter wider than an object with no width. I cannot possibly hide like this."

"So take the suit off," said Mr. Bucket. "Chili will hold you."

"I can throw him," offered Chili.

"To safety?" asked Mr. Bucket.

"No," said Chili.

For some reason Lim would not step out of his Taranturoo suit, and the rest of the children and Mr. Bucket had to disguise him as a tree. Leaves were tossed around his feet and each of his claws were given a long stick to hold.

After they finished the rest of the children sat in the bush closest to him and waited. Everyone was silent except for Mahuika, who helped pass the time by sharing a fun fact about herself. Before Chili could inform her how he felt about it through the creative medium of physical violence the sky began to scream.

"There they are," said Mr. Bucket. "Look! The VIPs! All one hundred of them!"

One hundred VIPs flew out from the clouds and began to swarm above the cylinder in a tight circle which began to come closer to the ground. As they slowed down it became possible to see them individually. They were shrieking and filling the air with high-pitched loud screechscrotches.

They were birds, but not like any bird Chili had ever seen or read about. They were as tall as Mr. Bucket with wings twice as long as half his height. They had white rings around their long necks and shiny black feathers. They had long antennae on their foreheads and two small pincers coming out of their chests and giant ears and long ugly beaks and teeth as sharp as teeth-shaped knives.

"What does VIP stand for?" asked Keerthi.

"Very Intelligent Pheasant," said Mr. Bucket. "I made them myself. Each VIP is sixty percent pheasant, twenty percent vulture, five percent bat, and five percent prawn."

"What about the other ten percent?" asked Keerthi. "That only adds up to ninety."

"I can't tell you," said Mr. Bucket.

"Why not?" she asked.

"Because," said Mr. Bucket. "If I said that the other ten percent came from the most poisonous snake in the world, one of you would say something very anno-"

"Venomous," said Lim. "Not poisonous. Snakes are venomous, not poisonous, since they bite."

"No!" said Mr. Bucket. "Not the Crying Mamba, which cries tears of pure poison."

"But why would you use DNA from a poisonous animal if you are going to use them to make coffee?" asked Keerthi.

"Because," said Mr. Bucket. "They are emotionally intelligent, and that is the section of their DNA that I used, not the poison tears. Emotional intelligence is rare in reptiles. All other snakes are corrupted by a horrible snake culture that forces them to hide their sadness behind false bravado. It's the same with sharks."

Tide frowned and nodded.

"That isn't a real animal," said Chili. "It would have been in National Geographic."

"Harrumph," said Mr. Bucket. "You should read Wonka Geographic instead! But we cannot discuss it now. Prepare yourselves for the vomiting!"

"The vomiting?" asked JUROR.

"Yes! The vomiting," said Mr. Bucket. "I found out that with the right combination, you can make a stomach environment that tastes even better than the make-believe civet coffee might have. But the best stomach coffee comes back up from the front, not from out the back. Vultures are excellent for this, since they are the best vomiteers nature has to offer."

One of the VIPS separated from the group and flew to the middle of the circle. He flapped in place, pointed his head down, and regurgitated a blob that shot down into the top of the cylinder in a quick blur.

"This is ridiculous," said Lim.

"It is," said Mr. Bucket. "That shot only clocked in at 1400 miles per hour. On most days they fire at much higher speeds, and not one at a time."

After the bird fired at the cylinder it pointed a wing at the ground and shrieked. The other VIPs shrieked too.

"Do they always shriek so loudly?" asked Keerthi.

"That is how they speak," said Mr. Bucket. "I am sure they are having a conversation about how great of a boss I am. They are having a grand old time."

"No," said Tide.

"Fine," said Mr. Bucket. "A whale of a time."

"They are talking about Lim," said Tide. "They know he isn't a tree. And they know we are beneath this bush."

Everyone vaped or looked at Tide in confusion.

"How the fuck would you know?" asked Chili.

"I can speak to animals," said Tide. "I stay away from the ones that don't have anything to do with Ocean, but I can understand or talk with any of them. Including the VIPs."

"Animals aren't smart enough to talk," said Lim. "Maybe these abominations that Bucket cooked up, but not normal animals."

"Not with words," said Tide. "Some speak with snips, or snaps, or echolocation, or by mauling an igloo full of your nicest followers and drawing pictures with their blood. Whenever I hear those signs, they turn into words in my head, and it's like I'm speaking to a human. It is the same in reverse. When I speak to them, they hear my words like they are snips or snaps or echolocation or mauling an igloo full of-"

"Shut up," said Chili.

"If you understand them, what are they talking about now?" asked Keerthi.

"Most of them think Mr. Bucket invented Lim's suit to kill them," said Tide. "Moreover they are arguing about whether it is a spider-kangaroo or a cricket-kangaroo."

"How could they possibly think cricket?" asked Lim.

"Now they are saying they would rather die in a futile quest for freedom than die as vomit slaves," said Tide. "They can also hear me speaking to you."

"You are silly," said Mr. Bucket. "The VIPs love me and would never want to leave. They are not slaves! Our relationship is different than that. I see them as living sapient creatures that I own and who work for me and who are not allowed to leave or stop working for me, not slaves."

Keerthi leaned over to Mr. Bucket and whispered something in his ear.

"Oh," he said. "Are you sure?"

Keerthi nodded.

"Hmm," said Mr. Bucket. "Well! It does not matter. Children, I will not allow the VIPs to harm you as they are sure to do in order to take revenge on me, even if the Wonka Security System does not work in this special room, since it does not have normal walls and floors and ceilings. It is dirty of them to try that! Especially since it wouldn't bother me at all."

The VIPs shrieked all at once.

"I don't think they understand exactly what you said but they picked up on the tone," said Tide. "They said they know that we are innocent children and they only want you."

Mr. Bucket frowned.

"Are you sure?" asked Mr. Bucket.

"Yes," said Tide.

"It could be a translation error," said Mr. Bucket. "Those happen sometimes. Once I knew an Oompa Loompa named Roy, I might have told you about him once. He kept telling me that he wanted to die, so I brought him as many dice as I could, but it turned out-"

One of the VIPs fired a blast of projectile vomit at Mr. Bucket's top hat. The speed of it blew all the leaves off the bush everyone was hiding behind and disintegrated his hat.

The VIPs began to lower and encircle the bush.

"Please tell them to stop," said Mr. Bucket.

"You used prawn DNA, Mr. Bucket," said Tide. "Everyone knows you can't stop prawns once they get going."

"Chopin baby," said Mr. Bucket. "You are my favorite. I told you that? I told you that, I am sure. Please capture the VIPs in a way that makes it so they cannot hurt me. I will give you a chocolate bar."

"A factory," said Lim.

"That would fall under an unreasonable request," said Mr. Bucket. "Remember? We discussed this some time ago-"

Another VIP vomited, and the blast chopped some of Mr. Bucket's long hair off.

"They are missing on purpose," said Tide.

"Instead," said Mr. Bucket. "I can give you a bottle of good taste. You won't have to like terrible musicians anymore. Does that sound good?"

"He'll die before he gives you the factory now," said JUROR. "And if the birds take him we're trapped."

"Yes!" said Mr. Bucket. "Good point! What a good point that is. My factory is large and difficult to navigate! You need a tour guide if you want to leave safely! In most of the rooms where it works, the Wonka Security System instantly choco-vaporizes unattended noncitizens."

"Sounds fair," said Chili.

Lim sighed. "Fine," he said. "I don't care to argue the point. But I don't have any nonlethal methods."

"What!?" exclaimed Mr. Bucket. "You can't kill them! They're too valuable, and poaching and hunting birds is always wrong! Always! Always! I will never contradict myself on this specific topic!"

"It isn't poaching," said Lim. "You would be giving me permission. You are a king."

"But, but-"

The VIPS landed on the floor and began walking towards Mr. Bucket, who backed himself away into a circle that closed in on him. Some of the VIPs used their chest pincers to help the children stand up and move out of the circle.

"Okay! Baby! I changed my mind! Shoot! Sizzlefire! Cannonload! Inboomerate! Hurry!"

Lim dropped his sticks and aimed his arms at the VIPs. They shrieked and began to fire ninety-eight blasts of projectile vomit at Lim, which covered the Taranturoo from head to toe in vomit. The machine quickly stopped moving, glued in place.

The VIPs shrieked.

"Lim," said Tide. "They want to know if you're okay. They didn't want to hurt you."

"Okay is a relative term," said Lim. "Even with the self-cleaner, it's going to take the machine a long time to get all this off. It's strong."

The VIPs shrieked in relief and then again in anger.

One VIP, larger than all the others, grabbed Mr. Bucket and held him against his chest with his pincers. It looked angry.

"Ha!" said Mr. Bucket. "Your bodies only produce one blast of vomit per day! You can't do anything to me! Not now!"

"They could drop you," said Chili. He picked up a nearby rock and dropped in front of the birds, demonstrating his idea.

"No," said Mr. Bucket. "They can't! They're prawns!"

"Why would that matter?" asked JUROR.

"Prawns only like to kill people using the most ironic methods available to them," said Tide. "Everyone knows that."

The largest bird shrieked and pointed a wing in the direction the children had come from. Then it slowly flapped its wings and took off from the ground, the others following it.

"Children!" shouted Mr. Bucket from the air. "The Very Intelligent Pheasants are only _emotionally_ intelligent! They should not be difficult to outsmart! They live in the cave inside the biggest mountain and will have no vomit until tomorrow morning at the earliest! Come and save me and we can continue the tour!"

"We will!" said Keerthi.

"Shut up," said Chili.

Mr. Bucket was dragged into the clouds with the VIPs.

The children continued to stare at the sky without saying anything.

"It's a test," said Keerthi. "He isn't really a slave owner. He is a good person who is testing us. That is all this is."

"I vape," said Mahuika.


	12. The Stairs

"Chocolate alligators," said Chili. "Fine. I don't care anymore."

"No," said JUROR. "Crocodiles."

"No," said Tide. "Chocodiles."

Chili, Keerthi, JUROR, Mahuika and Tide had been walking together towards the largest mountain in the VIP Room where the Very Intelligent Pheasants lived. Lim's suit had been subsumed by vomit that Keerthi had been unable to scrub off, forcing him to stay and wait while his self-cleaning features worked to free him. He said it would take at least one day to fix, which meant that they couldn't afford to wait.

The other five were over halfway there when they reached a river filled with chocodiles. There was no way across.

While the children sat and tried to decide what to do, Chili threw a pebble into the river.

"Keerthi," said Chili. "I accidentally dropped my favorite pebble in the river. He is my best friend and I lack the nutrition to retrieve him. Please jump in and save him."

"Chili," said Keerthi. "I know I already asked, but why do you want to kill me? I don't understand. I haven't done anything to you."

"Why," said Chili. "I ask for one small favor and you accuse me of trying to murder you. For shame. I am sure my good friend JUROR will help in your place."

"No," said JUROR.

"Or Tide! You love sea animals, and you are already wearing your diving suit. Go and hug them while you rescue Rockefeller for me. They will love that."

"No," said Tide. "Chocodiles aren't sea animals, since they live in sugar water. And that pebble isn't your friend. You were eating pebbles on the way here."

"Those weren't friend pebbles," Chili explained.

"You wouldn't know anything about friends," said Tide. "You don't have any."

"Shut up and die," said Chili. "I have plenty of friends."

"I doubt it," said Tide. "Nobody wants to be friends with people who try to kill them all the time. That is why everyone loves Ocean. The Ocean never killed anyone."

Chili opened his mouth to defend himself, preparing to list off all the many friends he did have. There were many! He was sure. There had to be.

"Um," said Chili. "Ned Brillbusker. We're great friends."

"You only met him once," said Tide. "He was interviewing you on television."

"And how many times did he interview _you?"_

"Once," said Tide.

"Oh. He did, didn't he."

Chili frowned and laid down and ate another pebble, facing the river.

"Chili," said Keerthi. "If you stop trying to murder us, we would be glad to be friends with you."

"No," said Tide.

"No," said JUROR.

"I vape," said Mahuika.

Chili sighed and ate more pebbles.

"We can worry about this later," said JUROR. "We should."

"Can you talk to the chocodiles, Tide?" asked Keerthi.

"I can try," she said. "But they aren't Ocean dwellers, so I wouldn't expect much."

Tide walked up to the edge of the river.

"Hello," she said. "My name is Tide. Would you mind helping me and my associates cross the river? We are trying to rescue a slaveowner."

"Don't phrase it like that," said Keerthi. "He isn't a slaveowner. He was pretending to test us."

"Forget I said that," said Tide. "We are trying to rescue a king who is pretending to be a slaveowner."

The chocodiles growled.

"What did they say?" asked JUROR.

"They say they don't care, but they will let us cross. Under one condition."

_**W**_

"Fuck you," said Chili as soon as they made it away from the river. "You gave them all my pebbles. My delicious pebbles."

"You made them look tasty with how you were gobbling them down," said Keerthi. "You can't blame them for wanting to try."

"We are in a chocolate factory," said JUROR. "You'll get."

"Stop doing that," said Chili. "No one cares about your art."

"I do," said JUROR. "That is enough for me."

"No you don't," said Chili. "Truncatism is pointless but you don't even do it. Not really. You only stop sentences and unimportant actions nobody cares about. You would never stop breathing. You would never stop blinking. You would never stop anything in a way that makes life harder for you or people you care about. You are an idiot who tricked bigger idiots into thinking you are deep. You are lazy and worthless and no one will ever love you."

"You don't know what you're talking about," said JUROR.

"So quit the contest!" said Chili. "That would be honest. But you won't because you want to win a chocolate factory. If you ended it before you could win that would show that you were a real artist instead of a faker."

"I am an artist," said JUROR. "What I do is art."

"Bad art," said Chili.

JUROR said nothing.

The children walked for a long time, neither the occasional sounds of helpful fun facts or dirt-chewing helping to lighten the mood. They crossed three more rivers and passed through one more forest. By the time the fake sun had started to set, they made it to the mountain and found the entrance to the cave the VIPs lived in.

They did not enter.

"Uh," said Tide. "How are we going to do this?"

"You should save me!" Mr. Bucket shouted from inside the cave.

The children exchanged glances.

"You can hear us, Mr. Bucket?" asked Keerthi.

"Yes! Yes! It is a small cave! Maybe you cannot see, but as soon as you enter, you hit a wall, and then the only way you can go is up! It's a long, thin tunnel up and up and up and up! It goes up until you reach the peak of the mountain!"

"Did the VIPs trap you?" asked Tide.

"No! No! They are here, clumped up together in the vertical tunnel like bats, hanging upside down."

"So they can hear you," said JUROR.

The VIPs shrieked.

"Yes," said Mr. Bucket. "But they can only understand the one with the helmet."

"My name is Tide."

"Sure, if you say so! But please tell them to stop! I do not want anyone to get hurt, most of all me. Please explain to them that I am a good boss."

"You are not a good boss," said Tide. "You are a slaveowner. I cannot lie to them."

The VIPs shrieked with approval.

"No! No! No! You do not understand," said Mr. Bucket. "The VIPs are not my slaves! This is a misunderstanding. I have not been outside of my factory for a long time, so perhaps the definition has changed. But from what I know the VIPs cannot be my slaves! I would have known if they were! It would have changed the taste!"

"You admitted that you don't let them leave," said Tide.

"But I _can't _let them leave! There are too many of them! The trees wouldn't have any if they took all the leaves for themselves! I need my WonkaLeaves! They are too delicious!"

JUROR sighed.

"You said you owned them," said Tide.

"It's true," said Mr. Bucket. "But that is not my fault! I cannot make them better at computer games! I gave them shiny new keyboards and deluxe monitors to practice with because they asked. It is not my fault that they can't beat me in multiplayer. They should try harder!"

"You also said that they aren't allowed to stop working," said Tide.

"Not during their shift, no," said Mr. Bucket. "But they have breaks and twelve weeks paid vacation and maternity time. They are allowed to quit, but none ever have."

Tide repeated what Mr. Bucket said and asked the VIPs if it was true. They shrieked.

"They say you don't give them any sick leave," said Tide.

"Of course I don't give them any sick leave! They are always sick! They vomit for a living!"

"But you don't pay them," said JUROR.

"Are you listening? I give them computers and paid vacation! Obviously I am giving them regular paychecks too!"

Tide asked the VIPs if they got paid.

"They say they only get minimum wage," said Tide.

"Yes," said Mr. Bucket. "That is right. I am only giving them minimum wage. Tide. How many millions of pounds and or dollars-"

"Sand dollars," said Tide.

"No," said Mr. Bucket. "Land dollars. How many _millions _of American land dollars do you think minimum wage is in Wonkaland? Here is a hint. It is a number between five and above five."

Tide asked the VIPs if they were receiving over five million dollars per hour.

They shrieked.

"They said you don't do direct deposit. They want direct deposit. They don't like the inconvenience of having to deposit a physical check every two weeks."

"They will pry the forms for direct deposit out of my cold dead hands," said Mr. Bucket. "But by now please say that you can see that they are not my slaves! I am an excellent boss! Once I gave them a ping pong table! No terrible boss has ever given their employees a ping pong table!"

"VIPs," said Tide. "Mr. Bucket is a horrible person. But from what I have seen he is not a bad boss. I am the most thoughtful religious leader in the world and I would have never bought my followers a ping pong table."

"Fuck both of you," said Chili.

The VIPs shrieked meekly.

"Yes," said Tide. "You were wrong. I am sure if you let Mr. Bucket go and tell him that you are sorry he will forgive you. He still needs you to make his coffee."

The VIPS shrieked apologetically and then grew silent. The children heard the sounds of someone's feet hitting the cave floor, and Mr. Bucket ran out and greeted the children.

"Good job, Tide. You get fifty points."

"There were points?" asked JUROR.

"No," said Mr. Bucket. "But there are now. If I am ever again held hostage by Very Intelligent Pheasants who think they are my slaves and you manage to free me without shedding anyone's blood you will receive fifty points."

"Do we get points for anything else?" asked Keerthi.

"No," said Mr. Bucket.

A Taranturoo-shaped Taranturoo landed on the ground next to Mr. Bucket and the rest of the children, shaking the ground.

"The self-cleaning went faster than expected."

"Good! Chopin baby! The emergency is over but I still need you. Please destroy the VIPs immediately."

"Sure," said Lim. He went inside the cave.

"But Mr. Bucket, you said-"

"Keerthi," said Mr. Bucket. "I don't want to do it. But they forced my hand. What if they tried to do it again? I need to set an example."

The children heard the sounds of gunfire and explosions coming from the cave. The VIPs shrieked.

"But they're people! They have feelings and opinions like you or me! You can't do that to them if they are smart enough to have homes and families and bank accounts!"

"No," said Mr. Bucket. "They are too intelligent for that. They are all members of their local credit union."

"But Mr. Bucket-"

"I know Keerthi, I know! Yes! I admit, it does make it that much harder to find an ATM when you need it, but the amount you save in maintenance fees-"

"That isn't what I meant!" yelled Keerthi. "It isn't fair! Even if they were wrong to go against you, you cannot destroy all the VIPs!"

"Of course I can," said Mr. Bucket. "I do it all the time, remember? But I'm tired right now. Lim appears to be good with technology because of his Taranturoo and I thought he would enjoy it."

Lim walked out of the cave.

"It's done. The VIPS have been destroyed."

"Thank you, Lim. Did you turn the computer off after you won the match?"

"Sorry," said Lim. "I forgot."

Lim walked back inside the cave. The VIPs shrieked again.

"No," yelled Tide. "He's not giving you a rematch! We don't have time."

"Oh," said Keerthi. "You meant in a computer game. Oh."

"Duh," said Mr. Bucket.

"What did you think he meant?" asked Lim as he walked back out.

_**W**_

After Mr. Bucket led the children away from the cave and back into the forest and Chili had his final share of WonkaDirt, he stretched out his arms in the air and yawned.

"What a fun room that was," said Mr. Bucket. "But it is time to go ahead to the next one. Let us continue on."

"Do you think we could take a short break from walking?" asked Keerthi. "We were hiking for a long time to try and get to you."

"Have no fears," said Mr. Bucket. "Once we reach the next room, I have arranged transportation to carry us forward. All we need to do is go down the stairs."

"What stairs?" asked Tide.

"The ones going down," said Mr. Bucket.

"Right," said JUROR. "But where can we find those stairs?"

"Good question," said Mr. Bucket. "Children, if you are out in public and you want to find stairs, what should you do?"

"Look for a sign?" asked Keerthi.

"Vape?" asked Mahuika.

"No," said Mr. Bucket. "If you want stairs you need to have them wanting to stair at you. In most countries, people might stair at you for any reason. Not in WonkaLand! Here people only go around stair-ing if they see something truly stair-able."

"Like what?" asked Lim. "A person in a Taranturoo is worth stair-ing at."

"No," said Mr. Bucket. "In WonkaLand incredible inventions are commonplace! So the stairs will not stair at that. But no matter where you are there is something no one can help stair-ing at. That is how we will make the stairs come."

Mr. Wonka pulled a balloon out of his pocket and blew into it. Quickly it filled up with air and became a normal top hat, which he put on top of his head to replace the one which the VIPs had disintegrated.

He threw his new hat to the ground and pulled off his hair. It was a wig.

"I am bald," said Mr. Bucket. "Children, if you remember only one lesson from this experience, please know. Shaving cream does not belong on pies."

"I hate you," said Chili.

"Understandable," said Mr. Bucket. "Thankfully it will grow back. But since I am currently bald…"

A wide door appeared behind Mr. Bucket and the children. It had wide wooden eyes and a fat mouth.

It was stair-ing.

Mr. Bucket turned around and pointed at it.

"You! You! What do you think you are doing!"

"Oh," said the door. "I was… it wasn't you. It. It was the forest. I love stair-ing at the forest. The trees are beautiful this time of year."

"Liar!" shouted Mr. Bucket. "You are a filthy liar! You rude rude rude door! I am bald! My life is hard enough without stair-ers like you! You have no right! No right!"

"I'm sorry," said the door. "I wasn't trying-"

"No!" said Mr. Bucket. "Shut up! I do not want to hear it. My group and I will be leaving immediately! Now open up! Consider yourself lucky that I do not go around telling everyone what you were doing."

The door swung itself open. "Sorry. Sorry. There's no excuse. Please. I'm sorry."

"Terrible!" said Mr. Bucket as he shooed the children inside and followed them. "Shame on you!"

He slammed the door shut.

_**W**_

"Sorry about that," said Mr. Bucket. "But there is no other way to exit the VIP Room."

Mr. Bucket and the children were standing on the top of a long, wide set of white stairs. There was enough room for ten Tarantulas to have walked side by side. They were steep, and Chili couldn't see the end of them.

"You said there would be transportation," said Tide.

"Coming up, coming up. First we must go down the stairs. There are only five thousand. Make haste, children!"

Mr. Bucket began putting his wig back on.

"Go! Don't wait for me. You are children. You should be faster than me."

Keerthi shrugged and took her first step down. The others followed. JUROR stepped on his shoelaces and began travelling down the stairs, racing past the others.

"JUROR!" yelled Mr. Bucket. "Stop! That is not how you walk down stairs! You are supposed to go down from the first step to the second! From the second to the third! You cannot skip all those steps!"

JUROR continued skipping steps.

"Fine! Fine! But please! If you must skip steps, at least touch them with your shoes! It will contaminate the WonkaSteps otherwise! JUROR! No! You cannot land on the steps with your teeth! No! Your exposed bones are not any better! Stop it! JUROR, I am begging you! Truncate! Truncate!"

Mr. Bucket's cries did nothing to slow JUROR's descent. He fell until no one could see him anymore.

"Hold on! We're coming!" yelled Keerthi.

Mr. Bucket and the rest of the children raced down as quickly and carefully as they could. It took them several minutes to get to him.

After more than two thousand stairs they found him again. He was breathing, slumped over four stairs.

"Oh, JUROR. I am sorry to say it but this is not acceptable. You know I had a rule about getting stomach acid on the stairs. The contract I taped to the contract on the back of the contract you signed was very clear about this."

"Mr. Bucket, help him!"

"I will, Keerthi. I will. But we need to be patient. It's almost time."

"Time? Time for what? What are you talking about?" asked Keerthi. "We don't have time for this! He's going to die!"

"There!" Mr. Bucket shouted and pointed to a figure coming at them from the top of the stairs. "There! Oh boy! This is it!"

A tiny man wearing a business suit walked down the stairs and approached the group. He said nothing. He looked sad and carried a briefcase.

"Where are the others?" asked Mr. Bucket. "And what are you wearing?"

The man handed Mr. Bucket a piece of paper. He scanned it quickly.

"Letter of resignation?" exclaimed Mr. Bucket. "Couldn't come up with anything? What do you mean you couldn't come up with anything? You had weeks to think up a poem! Weeks! Is this a joke?"

"He only fell several minutes ago," said Tide.

"We tried," said the man. "We couldn't do it. Poetry is hard."

"That is no excuse to quit!" screamed Mr. Bucket. "This is absurd! This is the only reason you lot have been allowed to stay! The only one! I have tolerated your onion whizzpoppers for twenty twiddletolling years and you come to me now and say you cannot do the one job I have given you since?"

"It's hard. We've been out of practice, and-"

"And nothing! I've given you dime and time and you won't even rhyme! You had permission to make up words if it helped and you still cannot do it! How? How?"

"It's hard. There isn't much there to work with. He doesn't end what he does? What does a poem like that focus on? Are we supposed to end the poem early? Would anyone even recognize that we did that? It's the first one, so without any established pattern-"

"Oh my god," said Mr. Bucket. "What are you talking about? It was shoelaces! His fatal flaw was that he didn't tie his shoelaces! That was all it needed to be! Kids who don't like laces will fall flat on their faces! They won't go on chases and they won't go to places! Like that but better! Can't you do that?"

"Mr. Bucket," screamed Keerthi. "Please!"

Mr. Bucket turned to a crying Keerthi.

"Get out of here, Belleau. I never want to see any of you again."

Belleau wiped a tear from his eye and left the way he came.

Mr. Bucket took a breath to calm himself down and snapped his fingers. JUROR, JUROR's teeth, and everything else JUROR was pulled into the floor.

"Where did he go? What's going to-"

"Keerthi!" shouted Mr. Bucket. "Relax. JUROR will be fine. The factory will bring him to the non-citizens hospital and he will be treated at a reasonable expense. My medical care is the best in the world."

"When you dragged him into the floor, he didn't have a pulse," said Lim.

Mr. Bucket laughed. "Any doctor who would worry about a mild concern like that shouldn't be practicing," said Mr. Bucket. "Have no fears, JUROR will be fine. Physically. Morally, no. There is nothing I can do for rulebreakers. A shame."

He smiled.

"One was a dud, yes. But! But! But! We have five excellent children remaining, all of impeccable character and unquestionable intelligence. Smoke! Ocean! Baby! Annoying and Annoying! We can't stop here! Down the stairs we must continue! Down to the Vaping Room!"

Someone did something.


	13. The Cake Room

The children finished climbing down the stairs. At the bottom, there was a locked door.

"Sorry children," said Mr. Bucket. He pulled a ring of keys from his pocket. "I do not recall which key belongs to this door. This should only take time."

"_Halfway down the stairs, is the stair where I sit…"_

"Are you excited, Mahuika?" asked Tide. "This is your moment."

Mahuika did not answer.

"Excited about the Vaping Room," said Tide. "We are going to the Vaping Room. Remember?"

"Yes," she said. "I will vape there."

"_There isn't any other stair quite like it…"_

"Stop humming," said Chili. "And shut up. And die."

Mr. Bucket tried to turn another key. "Keerthi is not humming, Chili. It is hard to tell, but what Keerthi is doing is called singing. I do not know why."

"I am in a good mood," she said.

"See! She watched someone die and she is happy because of it!" yelled Chili. "Her bloodlust is unquenchable. This is why I was saying we should murder her."

"No," said Keerthi. "I'm happy because I figured it out."

"Figured what out?" asked Lim.

"JUROR wasn't real," said Keerthi. "He was working for Mr. Bucket."

"I would never employ a rulebreaker," said Mr. Bucket. "None of the six winners of the contest have ever worked for me. You were all invited here because you solved a hard riddle."

"I do not think you are going to admit it, but it makes perfect sense," said Keerthi. "Think about it. He keeps pretending to be a terrible person, but he doesn't do anything that bad! He is only silly. He pretended to be a slaveowner to trick us!"

"I never pretended to be a slaveowner," said Mr. Bucket.

"Ten minutes ago you watched him fire ten people because they weren't able to recite a poem about a dying teenager," said Lim. "In front of the dying teenager. Who he let die."

"Only a little," said Mr. Bucket.

"But that is what I'm saying!" said Keerthi. "I think that was fake. Remember the first room? JUROR pretended he couldn't read because Mr. Bucket wanted to test us and see if we would be nice enough to help him. It's like the first contest! But it can be different. If we are all nice to each other, even when Mr. Bucket pretends to be mean himself, we will all win."

"This is not a contest," said Mr. Bucket. "It is, but you are already winners. You are getting a tour. I do not understand what else you think you would be getting."

Keerthi laughed. "Yes, Mr. Bucket. Whatever you say."

"Keerthi," said Tide. "Do you remember the tumor corpse he showed us? Or when he tricked us into thinking he killed himself? Or the war he started? He is a bad person."

"I am not," said Mr. Bucket.

"The corpse was fake," said Keerthi. "So was his suicide. It isn't fair to blame the war on Mr. Bucket. Everybody was trying to make superbabies. I remember reading in a newspaper that the United States House of Commons had voted to start a program to try and do what CHOCOR did before it was released. China, Japan, France, Urkeldelphia! Everybody! All WonkaLand did was beat them to it. It's like people who say that World War 1 started because Franz Ferdinand wanted a sandwich and got assassinated while getting it. It isn't true! Everything was terrible in Europe and the war was going to happen no matter what around the time he got shot. Maybe he would have been assassinated the next day while eating breakfast."

"JUROR is a famous artist," said Lim. "Unless you think Mr. Bucket has been working with him since he was five."

"Maybe!" said Keerthi. "Or maybe that wasn't the real JUROR. Maybe he asked the real one to stay home, and the one we met was an Oompa Loompa, or a robot, or a VIP in disguise. With the technology he has, there are many possibilities."

"You are an idiot," said Chili. "You should die."

"You shouldn't," said Tide. "But you are being dumb. You are in denial, and not only about the Ocean being god. Why are you so insistent about this?"

"I'm not," said Keerthi. "I think…"

"It doesn't matter what you think," said Mr. Bucket. The door was open. "I have unlocked the next room!"

He opened the door and frowned.

"Wait. This isn't the Vaping Room! I forgot. We have to go through the Cake Room before we can get there."

"I vape," said Mahuika.

"In time," said Mr. Bucket. "In time."

_**W**_

Except for the VIP Room, the Cake Room was the largest room yet. The floor was mostly empty, but above where Mr. Bucket and the children were walking, thousands of conveyor belts ran across up and down and in loops like an Escher painting, delivering cake in and out of holes in the walls.

"We do not have time to stop and spend time here," said Mr. Bucket. "But I will give you the tour as we go. The belts in this room, they have every sort of cake you can think up! Carrot! Cheese! Ube! Red Velvet! Blue Velvet! Upside Down! Downside Up! Wedding! Snozzberry Surprise!"

"Can we have any?" asked Lim. His voice synthesizer sounded cheerier than it usually did. "I love cake."

"Of course you do," said Mr. Bucket. "All babies love cake! I produce twenty million tons of cake per day and half of that is shipped to Madagascar alone for the first generation CHOCOR babies that were exiled there. They are among my best customers."

"So can I have some?"

"Yes," said Mr. Bucket. "You must be careful however. All babies love cake but all babies are _messy _with cake and I do not want a mess inside my factory. Do you promise to be careful?"

"Yes," said Lim. "Cake. Please."

"Fine," said Mr. Bucket. "All you must do is reach your hands out and ask the ceiling to deliver the flavor you want. If you want to invent a new flavor, ask for it! The machine will make it for you."

"Can it make a poison cake?" asked Chili. "Keerthi, I have a present-"

"Birthday cake!" shouted Lim.

A conveyor belt above Lim bent sideways and dropped a plate for Lim. It fell at a trajectory that allowed him to catch it while still walking. Cake fell on the plate afterwards, along with a fork.

One of Lim's claws changed into a tube and sucked it off the plate like a vacuum cleaner.

"Lim," said Keerthi. "How do you eat?"

"Normally, my Taranturoo will deposit a special paste directly into my body that gives me all the nutrients I need. But now I am sending the cake straight to my mouth."

"I bet that paste doesn't taste good," said Mr. Bucket.

"I wouldn't know. I have my taste buds turned off when I eat it. Taste is a useless sensation that tricks inferior people into eating food that isn't nutritionally optimal."

"You are eating my delicious cake right now!" said Mr. Bucket. "You liar."

"Cake is worth it," said Lim. "I am superior enough to understand that _only _cake is worth it. Unlike you all. That is what makes me better."

"Quit being obnoxious," said Tide. "We are all children of Ocean."

Lim stopped walking. The others stopped too.

"I am not saying it to gloat," said Lim. "I don't think it is your fault that you are inferior, and I don't think you deserve to be treated badly because of it. In the future all the leaders of the world will be CHOCOR-born and you might be jealous but you will all live much better lives because of it. We live for much longer than you and our brains are smart enough to control machines you could never dream of understanding."

"Shut up," said Mr. Bucket. "You are too young to be talking about this. You babies have caused us all enough trouble to think you are better than regular people. People blame me because I created you, but you were smart enough not to start the war! It isn't my fault. CHOCOR-babies are obnoxious. I shouldn't have made them. You killed billions! Do you know how many chocolates those people would have bought?"

"It was an accident," said Lim. "The first generation of CHOCOR-babies were arguing about how to make the world better and it got heated, because they all had different opinions. The tantrums were bad but no baby on any side ever hurt anyone who wasn't a CHOCOR baby on purpose. We are strong and our technology is great. Sadly that translated to many innocent people getting hurt."

Lim pointed to Chili.

"Still. Look at that! What the regular people did to him. They think he is inferior to them for made up reasons so they didn't care if he lived like a rat. To us you are all equally inferior but we would never deprive you of what they deprived him. A CHOCOR baby never would have done that."

"Fuck you," said Chili.

"I saw the way Brillbusker acted during the interview, Chili. He didn't treat you like he treated us, speaking to you in front of that dirty shack you live in. He hated you and he hated being there. He would have rather interviewed the man who was shot by the drones while trying to steal your ticket. That man was wearing a suit! He was respectable. Not like you."

"Shut up. Fuck you."

"He asked you why you didn't have a table! As if he didn't know. Of course he knew," said Lim. "He was mocking you."

"Fudge cake," said Chili. A plate fell into his hands and he started to devour it.

"I will get this factory," said Lim. "That will be the start of it. You and the rest of them will stop going through what you have been going through. You will live better lives. You will never go hungry again. You will own a table."

"Lim," said Keerthi. "I don't think this is a good conversation to have right now."

"Yes!" said Mr. Bucket. "I couldn't agree more. Especially when there is so much to see! This room isn't too interesting, but there is one more invention I would like you to show you. If you all come this way…"

He walked to a table that housed an object hidden by a curtain.

"What is this?" asked Tide.

"This was one of the most hardest inventions for me to invent," said Mr. Bucket.

"Double superlative," said Lim.

"I wasn't planning on visiting the Super Laxative Room during the tour, but if you want to we can go later. First this."

He pulled off the curtain and revealed a cake. It was shaped like Mr. Bucket's head, but was clearly made out of cake.

"You-cake?" asked Keerthi.

"Yes," said Mr. Bucket. "But that isn't special. A good baker can make a cake look like anything."

"So what's special about it?" asked Tide.

"You tell me!" said Mr. Bucket. "Children, do any of you know what the frosting is made from?"

"My scanners say fondant," said Lim. "Disgusting."

"Yes!" said Mr. Bucket. "This is fondant! But it's WonkaFondant."

"What the fuck is that?" asked Chili. Before anyone could answer, he pulled the nose off the cake and ate it. Keerthi, Tide, and Lim all screamed together.

"Chili!"

"No!"

"It's _fondant! _You can't _eat _it!"

He chewed and swallowed. "Tastes fine to me. Shut up."

Keerthi's jaw dropped. She watched him reach for another bite and turned to stare agape at Mr. Bucket, who was smiling. She broke off a tooth and took a small, nervous nibble.

"No! It's impossible! There is no way! No way! This can't be real!"

"It took thousands of tries, but I finally did it. Yes! Children, this is it! I have created fondant that doesn't taste like shit."

Lim sucked up the ears into his Taranturoo. Tide took the chin.

"Oh my Ocean."

Keerthi took some more for herself and made sure to grab a handful for Mahuika. Mahuika shook her head.

"I vape."

Chili grabbed Mahuika's share out of Keerthi's hands and ate it.

"You eat like a pufferfish," said Tide. "Slow down or you'll choke."

"He was eating dirt earlier," said Lim. "This is an improvement."

"Can you imagine it? I never thought there would be a fondant that would be better to eat than dirt," said Keerthi.

"Fuck you," said Chili. "Nobody's too good for dirt. And I don't eat too fast! You all eat too slow. He could end the tour at any time and then the food will go away forever and you will be sorry you didn't take what you did."

"Make sure you try my eyes," said Mr. Bucket. "It's the best part."

_**W**_

After everyone had eaten enough cake and WonkaFondant and paper plates Mr. Bucket and the five children left to go to the Vaping Room.

The interior of the room had nothing visible inside of it, and there were walls and a floor and a ceiling, but everything was made from clouds. The floor was solid and had no problem supporting a Taranturoo and five other people, one with a stomach full of pebbles and dirt and WonkaFondant eyes.

"I vape," said Mahuika.

"Where's the furniture?" asked Keerthi.

"It's here," said Mr. Bucket. "It's vaping. Give it a second."

The floors began to cough, and the clouds began to take shape, coming into form as machinery. There were giant beakers and bottles and beakerbottles and bottlebeakers, and towers of smoke machines, and e-juicebottlers, and electromagnetic cloud cannons, and semiautomatic vapewaxers, and shelves that went on forever, filled from bottom to top with vape pens and cartridges of every flavor imaginable.

"Now," said Mr. Bucket. "There is not much to explain here! Go, children! Go and vape to your heart's content."

"I strongly advise that none of you do that," said Lim. "Unless you dislike your central nervous system."

"What?" asked Keerthi.

"Because," said Lim. "WonkaTobacco causes brain tumors and neurological cell death."

"That was never proven in a court of law," said Mr. Bucket.

"It explicitly was," said Lim. "You had to pay over six hundred billion dollars to a special counsel the UN created to combat the health problems that resulted. Then you countersued the agency that tried to conduct studies on whether WonkaJuice did the same and won. Those studies don't exist because of that, but something - and I won't say what - tells me I might be able to draw a conclusion about whether WonkaJuice vapes are bad for you."

"I vape," said Mahuika.

"Yes," said Lim. "You do."

"Mahuika," said Mr. Bucket. "Don't listen to them! You love vaping. You love WonkaJuice! What is your favorite flavor?"

Mahuika vaped. Mr. Bucket took her by the hand and pulled her to a shelf filled with as many flavors as most people assumed there were stars.

"Have a new pen, Mahuika! Have ten! Which is your favorite?"

Mahuika didn't answer.

"What flavor are you smoking now?" he asked.

"Salmon," said Mahuika.

"So you like fish flavors then!"

"No," said Mahuika. "I vape."

Mr. Bucket frowned.

"I'm not sure she has a favorite flavor," said Keerthi. "I think she just likes to vape."

"No!" said Mr. Bucket. "She has to! She is the most famous vaper in the world, and she loves WonkaJuice! It is her favorite! Isn't it your favorite, Mahuika?"

"No," said Mahuika.

Mr. Bucket kicked a shelf and yelled.

"Why do you care what she likes, as long as she is buying it?" asked Tide. "It isn't like you."

"Because! That moron in Happiness Central makes better vapes than me and everyone knows it! Whenever I invent something, it is almost always best! I have the best chocolates! I have the best ice cream! I have the best dirt! That giant jerk is the one exception, and he makes the only two products I cannot beat! His vapes are one of them! Why, I should go up to him and give me a piece of my-"

"Mr. Bucket!" said Keerthi. "You don't know that Mahuika prefers those pens over yours. You haven't asked her."

"Of course she does," said Mr. Bucket. "You do, Mahuika! I can tell! You prefer Happiness Central vapes over mine. You smoke mine but you were only pretending to like them!"

"No," said Mahuika.

"So you do prefer mine!"

"No," said Mahuika. "I do not."

"But nobody else makes vapes," he said. "Nobody. What? You don't have a preference?"

"I vape."

Mr. Bucket quietly stared at Mahuika. She vaped.

"I understand," he said. "You vape. There's nothing more to it."

"She vapes," said Lim.

"She vapes," said Keerthi.

"She vapes," Tide.

"I vape," said Mahuika.

"I hate all of you," said Chili. "She's only pretending to be an idiot. She has spoken full sentences multiple times."

He walked over to Mahuika and slapped the vape out of her hands. She took the closest one off the shelf in the front of her and started to vape from it instead.

"You don't have any brain damage. Stop pretending."

Mahuika vaped, blowing a cloud of smoke into Chili's mouth.

He tasted sardines.

"I vape," she said.

_**W**_

"Onto the next room," said Mr. Bucket. "You will all love it."

"Wait," said Keerthi. "What is that part of the room for?"

Near the door that would have taken everyone out from the Vaping Room was a corner of the room made out of cement instead of clouds. It had wooden tables on it. They looked dusty and old, covered in pipes and scattered leaves. Before Mr. Bucket could tell them to stop, the kids had already begun to examine what was on the tables.

He sighed and walked over to join them.

"This corner of the room is where I used to make WonkaTobacco products, before the UN got all whiny. You think that splitting off from the world would leave you free to conduct your business as you please, but alas."

"These gummy worms are good," said Chili, peeling something off the bottom of a table.

"Those are regular worms," said Mr. Bucket. "They were chewing through the old wood and now they are dead."

"WonkaWorms?" asked Chili.

"No."

Chili shrugged and kept eating.

"What about these?" asked Tide. "Marshmallows?"

Mr. Bucket grinned. "No! It couldn't be."

The rest of the children walked over to Tide and saw what had excited him. It was an old glass pickle jar filled with black marshmallows.

"Oh! Oh!" said Mr. Bucket. "These! It has been so long." He opened the jar and took a long sniff. "They are still in perfect condition!"

"What are they?" asked Keerthi.

"It is hard to explain," said Mr. Bucket. "I can try! You see, children, nicotine is an interesting substance. It can be smoked or chewed or patched, and it makes people happy and on rare occasions make individual cells happy enough to blossom out and make new super cells that never stop making more new cells to be friends with! It's wonderful."

"It's cancer," said Tide."

"Same difference! But I was interested in nicotine for an extra reason. It reduces hunger. I analyzed nicotine from a chemical perspective to find out why that was."

"Oh," said Keerthi. "You wanted to try and find a way to make people less hungry without the need for the bad stuff in nicotine!"

"As if! No," said Mr. Bucket. "I wanted to reverse it! I wanted to find a way to make people extra hungry. Do you know what the best way to make anything taste good?"

"Vaping?" asked Mahuika.

"Seawater?" asked Tide.

"Friendship?" asked Keerthi.

"No! It is hunger. Hunger is the greatest spice. I speak from experience. If you are hungry, you will eat anything! Imagine if I could make all my customers hungry all the time! That would be great for business. They will buy more food and love everything they get!"

"You're an idiot," said Chili. "Do you have any more worms?"

"No," said Mr. Bucket. "I only have these marshmallows. But they are not-"

"Good enough for me."

Chili grabbed the jar and ate all the marshmallows.

Mr. Bucket frowned.

"Chili," said Mr. Bucket. "That was not a good decision."

"I liked them," he said.

"No," said Mr. Bucket. "I know that they taste good! Sadly they also have a terrible side effect. They do not work as intended. Instead of only making people hungrier, they… how can I explain? Have any of you ever seen how snakes twist around each other when they mate? It is like that, except all your intestines are doing it."

Chili frowned.

"Do not worry!" said Mr. Bucket. "All you need to do is wait fifteen minutes - not fourteen minutes, not sixteen minutes - and have another marshmallow. Perfect timing of an extra dose cancels it all out, because that is how pharmaceuticals work. That will prevent the intestine twisting, and the intestine imploding that follows."

"But he already ate them all!" said Tide.

"Yes," said Mr. Wonka. "But I kept one in the Failure Room. Factory, please bring us that marshmallow."

A short moment passed, and from the cement rose a pedestal with a tiny black marshmallow on it.

"There we are! Now all we need to do is wait," said Mr. Bucket. "Chili, I will tell you when fifteen minutes have passed. I have a WonkaTimer on me. You are going to feel hungry but you must ignore it! You do not want Twisty Stomachitis. It will hurt worse than the hunger will. If it helps to motivate you, I can give you a regular marshmallow too after you eat it!"

He set the timer on the table next to the empty jar. It began to count up.

"Please hurry up and be eliminated," said Lim. "I'm getting bored."

Chili laughed. "I'm not going to eat it," he said. "I have been hungry my entire life! None of you have ever felt true hunger before. None of you know what it's like to feel your stomach screaming before. To feel air inside your bones! To need to steal and take whatever you can! This is nothing for me. Nothing! Nothing! Nothing!"

"Chili!" screamed Keerthi.

Chili realized he had broken into the glass pedestal and eaten the second marshmallow. He swallowed and looked at the timer.

One minute had passed.

His stomach filled with pain. His legs buckled. He fell on his back.

"Why did you eat it? Chili! Why? Why?" said Keerthi.

He thought about it. He thought about it hard.

"I don't know," he answered honestly.

The floor ate him.

**This story is still on hiatus and will be for a long time, but I thought it would be nice to tell you that before I put up the next chapter.**


	14. The Control Center

Keerthi came home from her second ever day of school and went to go wash up for lunch. She stopped as soon as she twisted the faucet and caught a glance of herself in the mirror.

There was something on her nose. A stalk of skin hung near the base, a narrow splinter of flesh.

"What is that?" she said, poking at it.

"I am Chetan," it said.

Keerthi frowned. "Who said that?"

"I told you already," said Chetan. "I am Chetan. We can talk about this later. It is time for lunch. Your mother and father are waiting for you to finish washing your hands and come to the table."

"Lunch does not matter," she said. "I know that you are Chetan. But what are you doing on my face? Why are you there? Pimples are not supposed to talk."

"I am a skin tag," said Chetan. "I am different from a pimple. Pimples are caused by bacteria and stress. Only from love and effort was I borne."

"Please get off my face," said Keerthi.

"I cannot," said Chetan. "We are inseparable."

"That does not make sense," said Keerthi. "Please. Go away. I do not know what inseparable means."

"In this case it means that I am you. I am not all of you, but I am an important part. I am a real skin tag, not a fake."

"I wish you _were _a fake skin tag," said Keerthi. "Then I could peel you off and be done with you."

"You should not," said Chetan. "Most skin tags are fake! They are still hard to remove. They must be frozen or burnt or chopped off by a dermapopper! They are not borne only from love and effort. They are borne from irritated skin and age and diabetes. I am not like them. I am real."

"You cannot stay," said Keerthi. "Everyone will make fun of me."

"I was on your face since the start of this morning and no one said anything," said Chetan. "If they did, it would not matter. You would not care. Because of your parents."

"My parents?" asked Keerthi. "What do they have to do with this?"

"Everything."

"Everything?"

Chetan wiggled up and down.

"I don't understand," said Keerthi.

"Real skin tags are borne when children have good parents," said Chetan. "If children have good parents, sometimes when they are thinking they will hear a voice in their head that helps them make better decisions. If the parents keep it up, when the child becomes five years old the voice will become a real skin tag and appear on their face, or occasionally inside their liver."

Keerthi thought about what Chetan said. It was true that she occasionally heard a voice. Earlier that week her mother had made her lentil soup for dinner, which Keerthi didn't like the taste of. She had been especially hungry that day and it made her angry, so she decided she was going to throw her bowl on the floor and scream.

"You should not do that," the voice had said. "Your mother worked hard on that, and you love her. Lentils are good for you, and it won't taste as bad as you think it will. Once you finish your soup, you will probably get kulfi for dessert."

Keerthi listened to the voice and ate the lentils. She even thanked her mother, who gave her an extra serving of kulfi for having been polite. Listening to the voice had worked.

She did not think anything of it at the time. It hadn't seemed like a big deal.

"But," said Keerthi. "My new friends at school! None of them have skin tags on their faces. You can't tell me that all of their parents don't love them!"

"Most parents love their children," said Chetan. "Loving your child does not mean you are a good parent. There are seventy rules that all parents need to follow and teach if they want to be good and also have their children be good. Loving their children is only one of them. Liking their child is another. It depends on the child, but if between twenty and thirty of the rules are followed, then the child will grow a voice in their head. It will not sound clear unless it grows more and becomes a skin tag. For this, all seventy rules must be followed and then learned. All of your classmates have voices, but they only vaguely understand them. You were like this until today."

"How do you know?" asked Keerthi. "A voice is not like a skin tag. You can't see it."

"You also cannot see most real skin tags," said Chetan. "We are often invisible. The rules are organized from easiest to hardest. The first ten are hilariously easy to follow and teach, and any parent who cannot do that belongs in prison."

"What is the first rule?"

"I can't say exactly," said Chetan. "But it involves not murdering your children."

"My parents followed that one," said Keerthi.

"They did and many more. The twenty after the first ten are harder but manageable with consistent effort. Almost everyone who tries can reach twenty by the time their children turn five, and it is easy to spot the children of those who don't. Children without voices are obvious. They are sad and angry, and there are none in your class. You go to an expensive private school for children who are exceptionally smart, and exceptionally smart children rarely exist without parents who can follow the easiest rules."

"What about Little Matador?" asked Keerthi.

"Little Matador?"

"She is the main character in my favorite book," said Keerthi. "She is exceptionally smart and is kind to everyone she meets. But her parents are horrible people. So is almost every adult she knows. Still, she was brave and polite and never stood for injustice. She had to have a voice, even without parents who taught her the rules."

"That is a story," said Chetan. "It does not work like that."

"You are telling me in the whole world, no good children ever come from bad parents?"

"No," said Chetan. "I'm not saying that. Sometimes people do not have parents, or they have terrible ones… and they have to teach the rules to themselves. Usually parents never go farther than rule fifty or sixty, and the children grow up and spend their entire lives not knowing those rules, but they still become good people. They might even learn those rules as adults and teach it to themselves and grow a skin tag when they are older."

"Right," said Keerthi. "That is what Little Matador was! She learned those rules by herself when she was little."

"No," said Chetan. "Children can't learn all the rules by themselves. Not the early ones."

"Why not?" asked Keerthi.

"The first few rules are about basic survival, and children can, if they are both horribly fortunate and misfortunate, learn about them by themselves. But the rules immediately after that are about teaching trust. You cannot learn trust by yourself. If you do not have someone to help you learn about trust at the start of your life, you will never ever be able to trust someone. It does not have to be your parents but it must be someone."

"But Little Matador didn't-"

"Was Little Matador a good book?" asked Chetan.

"Yes," said Keerthi, confused by Chetan's interruption. "I loved it."

"Then I bet it does not really say that Little Matador learned about trust all by herself. She had someone who cared about her, I will assume. Or even some-thing. Rules do not have to be taught by parents but they must be taught by something external. Little Matador must have been taught the rules by anything that was not herself."

Keerthi thought about Little Matador, a book she remembered well. There had been good people, even before she got to the school and met Ms. Sweet. The parrot. Her neighbor. The librarian. The library itself, the books Little Matador had read, the authors who wrote all of them, if any or all of that counted.

"Oh," said Keerthi. "So it is true. But what about… what happens to people who are never taught those early rules?"

"It is important that humans never allow that to happen. Hopefully there will come a day when there are no people like that."

"You didn't answer the question."

Keerthi's mother called her.

"It is time to eat dinner," said Chetan. "You should not keep them waiting any longer. We can speak whenever you like, and you do not even need to move your mouth."

"My parents," said Keerthi. "They don't have skin tags."

"Your grandparents were not as good as your parents," said Chetan. "You do not need to know all the rules to teach all the rules. It does not make any sense, I know, but humans are able to produce humans who are better than themselves. If that was not the case, we would all be dead."

_**W**_

"Mr. Bucket is a bad person," said Chetan.

Keerthi watched as Mr. Bucket tap-danced on the spot where Chili had sunken into the floor.

"Maybe," said Keerthi.

"There is no maybe," said Chetan. "Mr. Bucket is a bad person. You should leave the factory."

In her entire life before winning the contest, Keerthi had only not listened to Chetan on three occasions. The first time she didn't listen to him she chipped a baby tooth. The second time she was sent to bed without supper. The third she spent over four months having horrible nightmares about the flame moths.

Chetan had never led her wrong. When she followed his suggestions, she ended up happy and well-rested. When she didn't, she fell off slides, got into pointless arguments with her parents, and was viciously assaulted by ravenous swarms of pyrokinetic moths.

Nobody had believed her about the moths.

The fourth time she had gone against Chetan's advice was when she ran away to run through the doors to the factory. Since then, almost every time Mr. Bucket moved or said something, Chetan reminded Keerthi that he was a bad person and that she needed to leave the factory.

At first she told herself that she was in a unique situation and that Chetan might have been wrong about it. Nobody was right about everything all the time. This became harder to say once she saw the corpse, and when she briefly thought Mr. Bucket was a slaveowner, and when JUROR fell down the stairs. But she still told herself it. She had never met a person, not in real life, who was truly not good. She thought Mr. Bucket had been pretending.

When Chili's stomach imploded she tried telling herself that Chili was an actor, but she only did it once before accepting that it wasn't true. She knew in her heart that Chili wasn't acting.

Mr. Bucket was a bad person.

"Please stop tap-dancing," said Tide. "It's disrespectful."

"This is the dance of my countrymen!" shouted Mr. Bucket, who was sweating heavily. "This is an honorary custom for those we have lost."

"You said he didn't die," said Lim.

"It's an allegorical lost," said Mr. Bucket. "Chili is a citizen of this splendid nation and I shall honor his efforts to continue the tour, even if he was an awful guest."

"You didn't do it for JUROR," said Tide.

"He was not a citizen."

"Right," said Lim.

Mr. Bucket stopped dancing.

"You four children do not understand. He had a fatal flaw! His gluttony was his achy heel. Truly, this was not his Chili and the Cho-"

"Stop doing that," said Tide. "Can we keep going?"

Mr. Bucket sighed. "If you insist."

He pulled out a coin and tossed it up into the air. He palmed it before anyone could see.

"Mahuika," he shouted. "Eye or vape! I cannot decide, so this will select the next room we go to."

"Vape," she said.

"Vape it is!"

He uncovered the coin. There was a picture of the man vaping on it.

"You got it! In that case, we will go to the Control Center."

They began to walk out of the Vaping Room.

"Wait," said Keerthi. "I want to ask again. Mr. Bucket, why did you invite us all to this factory?"

"My reason is simple," said Mr. Bucket. "It is all for a gag."

_**W**_

The Control Center was a tall room shaped like a pen. The four children and Mr. Bucket entered from the bottom and walked over a long spiral ramp made of cemented gumballs. When they reached the top, they found a dark room shaped like a small dome, with hundreds of thousands of television screens lining the walls from top to bottom. It was impossible to look anywhere other than the floor and not see a screen.

Keerthi looked at one screen and saw a ship sailing over a sea of moving licorice. In another, an oven baked cookies with mouths, complete with teeth and tongues. None of the screens had sound but the cookies looked as if they were screaming.

"Gross," said Mr. Bucket. "I hate all screens."

"But this is yours," said Keerthi. "You set this all up. You ran the contest over the net too. That involved screens."

"It must have been on accident," said Mr. Bucket. "I hate all screens! Television is terrible! Children are always watching too much television."

"But you work with television people all the time," said Tide. "They made all those movies about you. They would have needed your permission for that."

"Shut up," said Mr. Bucket. "This is the Control Center. This is the most important room in my factory! The Center Controller lives here. I send the Controller orders with the chip in my brain and it follows those orders and moves the walls and floors around."

"Where is the Center Controller?" asked Keerthi.

"It's an artificial intelligence," said Lim. "In the walls, I would assume."

Mr. Bucket laughed. "No! I do not make those. I am not crazy! The Center Controller is over there in the middle of the room."

He pointed with his cane to a statue in the middle of the room. It was black and mostly featureless as far as Keerthi saw from a glance, aside from the face, which resembled an old man's. About twenty copper wires, each thicker than Mr. Bucket's cane, fed from the statue's eyes, ears, neck, stomach, and back, leading to holes in the floor near the screens.

"The Center Controller is named J," said Mr. Bucket.

"What is it?"

Mr. Bucket smiled. "You remind me! I asked a question earlier. Children, what do you think should happen to lazy people?"

"Oh my Ocean," said Tide. "No."

"I can't detect if anything is in there," said Lim. "The walls of the statue are too thick."

"I vape," said Mahuika.

Mr. Bucket tapped his foot. "So are none of you going to answer?"

"Mr. Bucket," said Keerthi. "Is there a person inside of that statue?"

"No," said Mr. Bucket. "You did not answer my question so I will ask another. This time you must all answer. If someone told you that you were going to have to die, and they gave you a choice to either burn to death or drown to death, which would you pick?"

Nobody answered.

"Why aren't you answering?" asked Mr. Bucket.

"We assume that you are going to burn us to death or drown us to death if we do," said Tide.

"I promise that I won't if you all answer," said Mr. Bucket. "What do you say! Who is for the burning? Raise your hands."

Lim and Mahuika raised their hands.

"Why did you choose that?"

"Less pain," said Lim. "Quicker."

"If I was underwater, I could not vape," said Mahuika.

"And you two! Why did you pick the drowning?"

"Ocean's embrace would be a peaceful exit," said Tide.

"The moths," said Keerthi.

"What bad answers! You are both wrong. Lim and Mahuika are correct. Burning is much better," said Mr. Bucket. "You burn up quick! It is worse than drowning for only a small tick of time, but then your nerves burn up and you feel scrokkinaut."

"So what?" asked Lim.

"I will tell you! One day I was having an argument with a lazy person after I fired all of the Oompa Loompas. I told them that they should let me put a special chip in their brain so I can issue them commands and have them control the factory for me and they told me no. I said why not! They gave me an answer, but it was a lie, since they were lazy and wanted to lie around all day. They did not care if it hurt me. They only wanted to sit and watch everyone around them work. I waited until they were asleep and gave them the chip."

"Mr. Bucket is a horrible person," said Chetan.

"Yes," said Keerthi.

"They woke up and they were not happy! I asked them why they weren't happy, it was only one little chip! They said it was less the chip and more the twenty heavy copper wires tying them to the wall and the voices in their head. I told them to try working for once in their life to forget about it and they refused. So! I started burning."

"You incinerated someone because they didn't want to be your robot slave?" asked Tide.

"No! I did not want them to be my slave. I wanted them to be a Center Controller. And I did not incinerate them. I replaced their skin with an unbreakable chocolate coating that makes it feel like their skin is always on fire. The only way it stops feeling on fire is if they follow my commands and make the walls move the way I want to when I tell them to but only for a second."

"You said there was not a person in there," said Lim.

"There is not! There were people in there."

"People?" asked Keerthi. She ran around to the other side of the statue and looked closely at the sections where the wires fed into it. There were frozen faces burnt into the torso and back of the body, five in total. Two men, three women.

"Do not worry!" said Mr. Bucket. "They were all terrible people. Much worse than JUROR and Chili. They defended a man who let a child starve because he wanted to chew tobacco and sleep all day. Do not feel bad for them! I have scanned their brains. They do not think anymore. They are not people anymore. They are machines that work because they do not want to feel pain. Like clams! Happy chocolate clams that are always on fire forever."

"Leave the factory," said Chetan. "Leave the factory leave the factory leave the factory."

Mr. Bucket looked at all of the children. His smile flew away.

"Oh no! I knew this would happen. All of you look scared. Children, have no fear. We will be away from these horrible screens soon."


	15. The Convenient Chocolate Conveyor

Mr. Bucket and the four children left the Control Center and entered the next room. They all stepped onto a wide brown conveyor belt and were immediately conveyed through a long hallway.

"Children! We are now being conveyed throughout the factory," said Mr. Bucket. "Have any of you been conveyed recently?"

"Well," said Lim.

"No place in the world will convey you like the Convenient Chocolate Conveyor! It can convey you, at speeds distinctly slower than a healthy person's moderate walking pace, to an extremely limited number of locations! It is a miracle of technology! There is no other way to travel!"

"Walking," said Keerthi.

"Swimming," said Tide.

"Vaping," said Lim.

Everyone turned and looked round at Lim.

"I was kidding," he said.

Mahuika vaped. It smelled like sarsaparilla.

"Baby!" shouted Mr. Bucket. "I understand that you are terrified by your memories of the screens! Still you mustn't interrupt. We are being conveyed at an incredibly speedgawking pace! I will not have time to explain all the rooms we are conveyed through if you prevent me from talking."

"You," said Tide. "You didn't have to make it out of chocolate. Not everything needs to be made from chocolate."

Keerthi noticed that no one was talking about the clams. She understood why Mahuika wasn't talking about the clams, because Mahuika was vaping, but she wanted to hear Lim and Tide talk about the clams.

Somebody needed to say something about the clams. The clams were bad.

"Don't say anything about the clams," said Chetan.

"Shushahush! The first room is coming! The Potato Room! Oh, how I love the Potato Room!"

The Convenient Chocolate Conveyor conveniently conveyed Mr. Bucket and the children out of the hallway and into the Potato Room, which was a large warehouse filled with a single large potato. It was larger than a normal potato, but only a little.

"This is the Potato Room," said Mr. Bucket. "It's where I keep my potato supply."

"It's one potato," said Tide.

"Yes," said Mr. Bucket. "This is a chocolate factory."

"I should say something about the clams," said Keerthi.

"You should not," said Chetan. "It is the right thing to do but mentioning it will not make anything better. Leave the factory."

The Convenient Chocolate Conveyor conveyed them to the next room. Keerthi watched as a long interrupted sequence of machines hummed and whirred. Light green leaves dropped in through a hole in the ceiling to enter one side of it, packaged boxes whizzing out of the other.

"It smells like mint," said Tide.

"Yes," said Mr. Bucket. "This is where we produce all of Wonkaland's currency, caddies."

She sighed.

"It's worthless," said Lim. "He produces and delivers what are effectively unlimited quantities of it, hourly, to every capital of every country in the world. For free. The daily valuation rates make the _papiermark _look stable. There are entire slums in Asia and Central America where all the houses are built out of nothing but hundred quadrillion caddy bills. Some countries consider themselves to be actively at war with Wonkaland because the sheer physical weight of the amount of paper money he airdrops from the sky produces a force roughly equivalent to a large bomb. Last year a team of econophysicists in Spain discovered that any individual atom constituting each printed caddy bill, once separated, instantly becomes worth more than the entire currency."

"First of all," said Mr. Bucket. "I do not ship caddies to every country in the world! I do not send them to Urkeldelphia or Madagascar or Peachtown or Happiness Central or Australia."

Everyone either vaped or gave Mr. Bucket a confused look.

"Children," he said. "I do not know what opinions you have, but I always say both names. When you are in the chocolate business, you must work hard to avoid controversy."

"Earlier you mentioned one of them without the other," said Lim.

"No I did not."

"Yes," said Tide. "You did."

"There must be stringed seagulls in my ears because I cannot hear you! I was in the middle of defending the validity of my currency so! Second of all! This is an investment. Everyone will be using caddies when they realize how much nicer they smell than all the other money. That is why I am sending them out every which way."

"Sand dollars smell much better than mint dollars," said Tide.

"I don't see anyone building slums out of sea urchins," said Mr. Bucket. "Everyone loves the natural herbal aroma of caddies! Mint reminds people of tasty dinners! They are always using my money for incense."

"Burning it," said Lim. "They are burning it."

"Would you like a sample?" asked Mr. Bucket. "I cannot open any of the boxes, since they are to be shipped away, but you can all have what I have in my pockets. I will give each of you one Wonkillion caddies. Consider it an investment in the future!"

"Nobody take it," said Lim.

"Does it give you brain damage?" asked Keerthi.

"No," he said. "The cost of the amount of energy it would take to carry the extra gram far outweighs the actual value of the bill."

"You are only saying that because you are inside that fancy-shmancy Taranturoo! The math you are doing only works if it is powered by an impossibly expensive source!"

"Oxygen," said Lim.

Mr. Bucket paid Lim's words no heed, reaching into his coat. "Wait, where is my…"

He stomped his cane against the conveyor. "Those VIPs! Those rotten fingersmiths! Oh, they shall regret this! As soon as the tour is over, their online game playing experience will be dramatically reduced! The ping will rise, children! The ping will rise!"

"He can understand morality," said Keerthi. "He sees that stealing is wrong. If I explain to him that he should not make people into clams, he will stop."

The Convenient Chocolate Conveyor conveyed Mr. Bucket and the children out of the Mint and into another long hallway.

"He will not," said Chetan. "You already know that, because I am telling it to you."

"I heard people talking about him online," said Keerthi. "I read everything I could about him too. He had a hard childhood, but there were many people who cared about him. He must have a voice."

"Having a voice does not make you a good person," said Chetan. "You have to listen to it. Voices that are unused become corrupted. This is likely what happened to him. Think about him, Keerthi. You did the research. Please do not pretend that you do not know who he clammed. Do you think that anyone can get through to a person willing to do that?"

Throughout the years since the first contest, the Wonka scholars had been able to pierce together a respectable collection of information on him. Keerthi thought back to everything she read about Mr. Bucket before entering his factory and all she had learned about him since coming inside of it. About King Charles. About STARVING CABBAGE SOUP LAD.

About Charlie.

Charlie Bucket had been born inside of a small wooden house on the edge of town, which contained only one bed and only one flimsy table. He had a family who loved him dearly, including a mother, a father, two grandmothers, and two grandfathers, one of whom was the first person ever to be convicted of worker's compensation fraud in either England or the United States. He had no siblings and was at home constantly showered with attention, affection, and love.

He was poor. His father worked at a toothpaste factory, and no one else in his family had a job. His interviewed peers reported him having been so hungry that he stayed inside during recess as to preserve his energy. He only received a chocolate bar once per year on his birthday, which he would savor and make last for many weeks. Instead of a dog or a cat or a pair of rats, the only pet he ever had was a dust mite, which had to be put down after a horrible breathing accident. An average meal in the Bucket household during Charlie's childhood consisted of cabbage, grass, and expired toothpaste.

He was often bullied by the other children, who waved around candy bars in his face and legally changed his name in order to annoy him. He never responded to the taunting. His teachers claimed that he was a good and polite student, but they had been forced to grade him poorly since it was all he could afford. No one ever complained about his breath.

He lived in the same city as the largest and most famous chocolate factory in the world. It was impossible to escape the smell of constant chocolate in the air. There was no food store in this city that did not sell the chocolate that came from the factory. Everyone who tasted it thought it was the best chocolate in the world. The citizens of this city ate on average two-hundred and six bars of this chocolate every year. Charlie ate one.

When Charlie turned eleven, the owner of this factory sent out a letter to every television station and newspaper in the world explaining that he would be giving five Golden Tickets out, all hidden inside of his Wonka bars, and that the five children to find them first would get a tour of his factory and a lifetime supply of chocolate.

Four children won Golden Tickets before Charlie did. They were fed. They were rich. They had set world records. They had access to information and technology he could only dream up. For weeks Charlie looked at newspapers and saw their faces, their quotes, and their Golden Tickets. He saw his peers buying hundreds of bars for the contest while his family gave up food and vice to allow him two. Neither one held a Golden Ticket. Charlie would be painfully aware of his poor chances.

His father lost his job at the toothpaste factory, and he and his family began to starve. It was the coldest winter on record in the history of England or the United States.

The owner of the small stationary store where the Golden Ticket was won said that Charlie Bucket walked inside and placed a fifty [redacted] bill on the counter. He mentioned when talking to reporters that he was sure it was stolen, not that he cared. It was the thinnest child he had ever seen. The boy wanted to eat.

Charlie went inside the factory, and he met Mr. Wonka, who probably was not unlike the person Charlie himself grew to become. He saw a factory that, beyond the superficial, may not have been different at all from the one she was inside. He would have eaten for the first time in his life to his heart's content. He would have for the first time been treated to an experience that was both positive and unavailable to the average child.

Unlike Chili, he appreciated it. Salt, Teevee, and the newspaper reporters who interviewed Charlie all agreed on who he was. He was a good kid. He appreciated what little he had, he never swore, he always followed the rules, he hugged his family, he finished his toothpaste, he never said a bad word about anybody without being hounded into doing it first.

_He was good._

Did that matter?

Keerthi, like most others who had done their research, agreed that Teevee was the most reliable source. His narrative was that it had been a morality tale. It was a deliberate effort on Wonka's design, Mike said. He was making a point. He was making a statement. The ultimate angel got to play inside the garden. Charlie was the winner no matter how he got there, and he became the owner of the most powerful company in the world.

_He was good and he got rewarded for it._

Hence.

_People who are good are rewarded._

That wasn't enough. It was something but it wasn't enough. Keerthi remembered that Mr. Teevee hadn't focused as much on that half.

"Keerthi," said Chetan. "You are right. This doesn't mean you should continue focusing on this. You cannot fix this problem alone. Please leave the factory. I know it's hard. Think about your mother and father. They love you and they are worried sick about you."

_They were bad._

It wasn't important who Wonka loved. It was important who he hated.

Wonka hated them. Teevee said that Wonka hated them, that he dripped contempt for those four children and their parents with every spoken word. Keerthi thought he had been exaggerating and most people agreed. He was reliable compared to Salt, but he was also second place. Runner-up in a competition where gold gave you the keys to the kingdom and silver gave you a garbage truck filled with candy bars. If you sat on those memories for a lifetime and tried to think back on them, how could you have recalled any of it without imagining hatred?

But it made more sense if it wasn't imaginary. Wonka hated Gloop. He hated Beauregarde. He hated Salt. He hated Teevee. There was a false image of tough love, but it wasn't real. It was all punitive.

Drowned, disfigured, trashed. Made to make the walk of shame in front of the world, their names forever synonymous with their respective sins. He had to know they would never live normal lives after that. Lives at all.

_They were bad and they got punished for it._

Hence.

_People who are bad are punished._

At the age where it would have hit the hardest, Wonka had this unbreakable message carved into Charlie's soul. He was removed from a world that might have proven it wrong and locked inside of paradise, first with his mentor and then alone, his family failing to correct the delusion without being swallowed by it. Sixty years for that concept to internalize and ferment and rot inside the sweetest mental prison in the world.

What would that _do _to a person?

"He thinks the world should be fair," said Keerthi. "He thinks he's some arbiter of justice, and-"

"No," said Chetan. "If you are this close, better to get it right. I know it so you know it too. Give it some thought."

The Convenient Chocolate Conveyor had continued moving during Keerthi's tonally dissonant inner monologue, but it was still in the same long hallway.

He had not changed the topic.

"As impossibly popular and valued as caddies are, sadly they will soon be done away with," said Mr. Bucket. "Soon the WonkaCoin will render all physical money useless."

"The WonkaCoin? Singular?" asked Tide.

Mr. Bucket pulled a coin out of his coat. "Here it is. I haven't put in the computer yet, but it will be in my account soon."

"I thought you were supposed to mine it," said Lim.

"I did," he said. "It's mine."

"You are a monster," said Keerthi.

"Keerthi," said Mr. Bucket. "There are real criticisms against digital currencies, but you are being hyperbolic. It's not bubblegum."

"You are a fucking monster," she said.

Keerthi had cursed before. Twice, both times so quietly so only she could hear, alone in her room, and never in English. But it wasn't entirely new to her.

"We will have a talk about that later," said Chetan.

The curve of Mr. Bucket's mouth became flat. He pushed a button on his cane, and the Convenient Chocolate Conveyor stopped.

Legend spoke of a special rhetorical technique where a person could ask a question but have the sentence end with a period. Keerthi had never seen anyone who could do it in real life, but she had heard stories. It was a terrifying thought.

She did not expect Mr. Bucket to be one of those people.

"Why is that, Keerthi."

Lim and Tide did not say anything. There was the sudden awareness in the air that Mr. Bucket turned his mother and father and their mothers and their fathers into clams and he might have zero problem doing it to someone who levied serious criticism at his code of ethics.

"If you can find a way to turn this into a pun, you can still salvage this," said Chetan.

"You put the marshmallow in front of Chili." Keerthi did not understand why she brought that up. The clams were worse. She blamed his period-question. It threw her off.

"He ate the marshmallow," said Mr. Bucket.

"Yes," she said. "But you didn't have to put it in front of him. He needed to wait fifteen minutes to eat it, but if you didn't give it to him until the end, there wouldn't have been any risk of him failing."

"He ate the marshmallow," said Mr. Bucket.

"With who he is, there is no way he could have made it. You knew that. All you needed to do-"

Mr. Bucket tapped his cane against the floor and slowly leaned forward. Lim and Tide didn't move. Mahuika vaped.

"He ate the marshmallow."

It hit her. Her shoulders sunk.

"You think the world _is_ fair."

He smiled.


	16. The Disease Room

"Yes," said Mr. Bucket. "In every way. Do you disagree, Keerthi."

Mr. Bucket was smiling. Keerthi had seen him smile before, but she realized that he must have on every other occasion done it with his mouth closed.

He did not have teeth. He had thousands of tongues, each no larger than a fingernail, all lined up and packed on top of each other like the petals of a spiral flower, a hole in the center where food and air went. How he spoke was a mystery.

"Remember when he made that fondant statue of himself? That had regular teeth. He might be insecure about it! Use that insecurity against him," said Chetan.

"This isn't helping," she said.

"Do you disagree, Keerthi."

"Yes," said Keerthi.

"I disagree too!" shouted Lim's voice synthesizer. Other than when they were inside the Cake Room, Keerthi had never heard him sound so excited.

Mr. Bucket turned to smile at Lim, grinding his tongues together.

"You do."

"Yes!" said Lim. "Of course I do! The metaphorical cost of life isn't a fare! It is a charge! I cannot believe Keerthi forgot the difference between a charge and a fare."

"Oh," said Mr. Bucket. The tongues disappeared behind his lips, and the question marks in his voice came back. "Is that what you meant?"

"Obviously that is what she meant," said Tide. "Mahuika agrees with us too."

"I vape."

Mahuika vaped.

Mr. Bucket looked at the three of them, and then back at Keerthi.

"I misunderstood then! I thought you were saying another thing."

"I..."

Tide and Lim, who were standing behind Mr. Bucket, shook their heads at Keerthi.

"Did not," said Keerthi.

"Good," said Mr. Bucket. It's water under the grave."

"Um," said Keerthi. "You mean under the bridge."

"Sure."

He pressed a button on his cane. The Convenient Chocolate Conveyor did not start moving. Instead the ground shook slightly.

"Isn't it going to start conveying us again?" asked Tide.

"I was going to take us to the Safety Room, where everything is safe and it is impossible to be maimed, but I had a better idea. The Convenient Floor Conveyor is shifting ahead to account for our new path."

"The Safety Room sounds nice," said Keerthi.

"You wouldn't like it! It doesn't suit you at all," said Mr. Bucket.

"Mr. Bucket," said Tide. "You aren't angry at anyone, are you?"

Mr. Bucket raised his eyebrows and laughed.

"Me? Angry? Not at all, Tide. I am cool as a cucumber! Let screaming dogs die, I always say."

The Convenient Floor Conveyor started conveying again. It went down several hallways and made a sharp turn to the left before passing under a thick shower of orange mist.

"What is it spraying on us?" asked Tide.

"It isn't for us," said Mr. Bucket. "It is so that what is inside the room cannot escape. There is one on both sides, which is necessary."

Past the mist was another giant room. Inside of it there were hundreds if not thousands of chocolate fountains spurting colored chocolate in blue, pink, red, green, orange, purple, yellow, gr[redacted]y, brown, and dark brown.

"Keerthi," said Mr. Bucket. "Take a deep breath and hold it until we are conveyed out of here, or you will die."

Keerthi inhaled and covered her mouth with her hand. The Convenient Chocolate Conveyor did not move fast and the room's exit was far away. She closed her eyes.

"Why only her?" asked Tide.

"This is the Disease Room," said Mr. Bucket. "It is where I keep the diseases. Disease-keeping is all chocolate fountains are good for. Lim is inside of a Taranturoo, you are inside of an airtight diving suit, and Mahuika vapes, so none of you can get sick."

"I vape," said Mahuika.

"Yes, Mahuika, but Keerthi does not. She will die if she breathes in the diseases. It is the only way you can get what I keep in here, and they are the worst ones. So do not! Or do if you want, Keerthi. Maybe you can befriend the viruses. The ones that _are _viruses, anyway. Some of them are parasites, prions... Oh Keerthi! You will love the prions. They are all terrible at origami."

Do not breathe do not breathe do not breathe do not breathe do not breathe," said Chetan.

"Vaping does not prevent you from catching diseases," said Lim.

"My ears must be full of the diseases from the last time I was here," said Mr. Bucket. "I'm hearing all kinds of silly wehs and wahs."

"Why do you need diseases?" asked Tide. She leaned toward Keerthi and said in a quieter, quicker voice, so Mr. Bucket couldn't hear. "We are almost there. Be extra careful, but slowly, slowly exhale what you took in little by little. Not at all once."

Keerthi nodded and did what Tide told her. It did help, but not enough. She knew she wouldn't be able to keep it going for much longer.

"I don't _need _them, but they add to the decor."

Keerthi opened her eyes. They weren't even halfway there. Tide had been lying to her so that she wouldn't get discouraged.

She wasn't going to make it.

A pair of metal claws clamped themselves against Keerthi's face and back, and she was suddenly conveyed forward at a speed that only a Taranturoo could reach.

"Lim! No! You cannot run on the Convenient Chocolate Conveyor! You do not understand! It will be marginally less convenient for you that way! Truncate! Truncate!"

As soon as they made it through the mist, Lim set Keerthi down, and she started breathing again. The Convenient Chocolate Conveyor was quickly stopped so Mr. Bucket and the other two children could catch up.

"I thought you wanted to win," said Keerthi.

"I will," he said. "Don't worry."

"Lim," shouted Mr. Bucket. "How dare you! You could have inconvenienced everyone!"

"It was an accident," said Lim. "I apologize."

"Do be more careful," said Mr. Bucket.

"I will," said Lim.

Mr. Bucket pressed another button on his cane, and the ground shook again.

"Don't worry, children. I thought of another brilliant room for us to try. The Candy Tiger Room! It is filled with violently delicious candy tigers! But do not worry, Lim, Tide, and Mahuika. They only like to eat people who aren't you."

_**W**_

The Convenient Chocolate Conveyor moved forward again. Everyone was busy:

Mr. Bucket was trying to murder Keerthi.

Keerthi was trying not to be murdered.

Tide and Lim were trying to prevent Keerthi from being murdered.

Mahuika was vaping. Keerthi, who wanted to think of her as a friend, decided to assume that she was trying to help her as best she could.

Keerthi was not devoured in the Candy Tiger Room because Tide spoke with the tigers and told them about the litany of diseases Keerthi had contracted in the Disease Room. They did not believe her until Lim directed their attention to Chetan.

"I'm sorry about all that trouble," said Mr. Bucket once they had all made it out. "They don't like the taste of babies, and they hate seafood. They are superstitious too, thinking the vapes are unhealthy. You were the only option."

"What about you?" she asked.

"I am _bald_, Keerthi."

Keerthi was not sliced into pieces in the Slicing Room thanks to Tide's quick reflexes, and she was not diced up in the Dicing Room, since Lim was excellent at Yahtzee. Mr. Bucket was very apologetic about the slicer that almost fell on Keerthi's head immediately after he started fiddling with his cane. He was equally remorseful about the incident in the Icing Room, which involved too much non-Wonka fondant for anyone to comfortably dwell on.

The Commedia Dell'arte Mask Room came next. It was where Mr. Bucket made his Wonka branded Commedia Dell'arte masks.

"It works like the Cake Room. Ask for any Commedia Dell'arte mask and it will fall out of the ceiling. They will disappear if they leave this room. Watch! A Commedia Dell'arte mask that will murder people who solved puzzles after exactly four other people."

A Commedia Dell'arte mask in the style of il Capitano fell out from the ceiling and grew arms and legs. It reached into its own eyeholes and pulled out a knife.

"This isn't even tangentially related to candy anymore," said Lim.

"As I already said," said Mr. Bucket. "They add to the decor. Also they are made of chocolate. If you see something here and aren't sure if it is made out of chocolate, it is."

"I don't know what a Commedia Dell'arte mask is," said Tide.

"You would be laughing if you did," Mr. Bucket said.

"I doubt it," she said. "As Ocean says, good humor is more than simple reference. It must invoke the fundamental structure of all comedy: clever subversion of established audience expectation."

"I vape," said Mahuika.

Il Capitano began creeping towards Keerthi.

"Keerthi, fresh masks are like sharks in the womb. They love having friends. Please be friends with that mask."

"Mr. Bucket," said Keerthi. "Stop trying to kill me. Please."

"Why," said Mr. Bucket. "I ask for one small favor and you accuse me of trying to murder you. For shame."

She sighed. "A Commedia Dell'arte mask that makes it impossible to be murdered."

An il Dottore mask fell from the ceiling. Keerthi picked it up from the floor and put it on as il Capitano went in for a stab. Her skin glinted a golden light as the knife bounced off of it, as if it had tried stabbing a wall made of diamonds.

"Keerthi, my word!" exclaimed Mr. Bucket. He slapped the mask in the face. "You never told me you were a puzzle solver!"

"I solved the puzzle on your website," she said.

"This modern generation and their click machines," said Mr. Bucket. "I will never understand it."

He took il Capitano's knife from it and stabbed it once in the face. It died.

"You didn't have to kill it!" yelled Keerthi.

"It was a criminal," said Mr. Bucket.

"You made it to be a criminal!"

"Keerthi. I know he was a criminal because I stabbed him and he died. Since I successfully executed him for being guilty, we can know that he was guilty."

Lim picked up Mr. Bucket with one claw and held another seven to his neck. "Her face! What did you do with her face? My scanners aren't detecting-"

Keerthi took off her Commedia Dell'arte mask. Lim dropped Mr. Bucket and giggled.

_**W**_

Mr. Bucket and the four children made it to the end of the Convenient Chocolate Conveyor. There was another door.

"Children," said Mr. Bucket. "Our time with the Convenient Chocolate Conveyor has come to an end. You will all need to walk again. Or Taranturoo."

"I vape," said Mahuika.

"Or that," he said. "But be excited. The Comparison Room is the most exciting room yet!"

Mr. Bucket opened the door and went inside. Everyone else followed him.

The Comparison Room was much taller than it was long or wide. File cabinets shaped like bricks lined the walls in rows, the columns reaching eighty stories in height before reaching the ceiling. Some of the cabinet bricks were open, most closed, a continuous beat of soft echoed slams representing the ones in transition.

In the center of the floor there was a hole. Thick white strings, too numerous and fast moving for Keerthi to count, came out of the hole and opened the cabinets to take what they needed before shutting them again.

"What is this?" asked Keerthi.

"Children," said Mr. Bucket. "This is one of the most important rooms in my factory. It is where I make the comparisons."

"Comparisons?"

"It would require a long speech, I am sure none of you want to hear it."

"Sure," said Tide. "We can move onto the next room."

"Fine!" yelled Mr. Bucket. "I will tell you, I will tell you! Only because you are all so insistent! Today Wonkaland makes many products! We make bombs and jeans and pollution! If we make it, with only two exceptions, we make it the best! Better than everyone else!"

"I vape," said Mahuika.

"Yes," he admitted. "Vapes and..."

He shook his head. "It does not matter! Wonkaland is almost always the best and no one disagrees! That does not mean that people are not going around making inferior bombs and jeans and pollution. I cannot stop them from doing this! Actually! I can! But I won't. It does not matter to me."

"So what?" asked Lim.

"This is not the same for candy! After Mr. Wonka passed away, I said to myself-"

"How did he pass away?" asked Lim. "You never released that information. I'm more curious about that."

Mr. Bucket brought the tip of his cane to his mouth and sucked on the end, which was covered in chocolate and had touched the floor of the Disease Room. After ten seconds he took off his hat and began speaking.

"It was in 2005. Almost thirty years ago... we were working on a development in the most important project Mr. Wonka ever took upon himself to complete. His two specialties, children, were chocolate, which you already know... and _transportation. _He was always interested in transportation. Where people are coming! Where people are going! How they are getting there, how they can get there faster, and how to get to new places. There was one place... it is _special._ He had been trying to get there for longer than he had known me. There were less than five people in this world who knew about this place, but he wanted to go there! We worked hard, toiled, mucked with the vinegar for years to find out what it needed... until the accident."

"What happened?" asked Keerthi.

"We found the fuel we needed," said Mr. Bucket. "Our translation was correct! I am more sure about that than I was back then. Our method, not our fuel, was the issue. We settled on the day that we were going to do it! We ate a big breakfast to celebrate, the three of us! I had never seen him smiling as wide. He was so happy, he started a food fight with me! The mess we made... Mr. Wonka and I."

Mr. Bucket stopped talking and put his hat back on. He was finished with his story.

"But how did he die?" asked Lim. "You didn't answer."

Mr. Bucket looked at the hole in the ground.

"He was brined," said Mr. Bucket.

"Brined?" asked Tide.

"Brined. The fuel we attempted to use was rejected. Mr. Wonka was furious... I understand why. He demanded an explanation, but there was a misunderstanding, and he was brined."

"Leave the factory," said Chetan.

"Interesting," said Lim. Keerthi knew that Lim did not think it was interesting.

"He did not want to have a closed chocolate casket funeral, but it was necessary," said Mr. Bucket. "His face! I still..."

He pointed to the hole in the center of the room.

"This! I made this room because of him! He should be honored! He should be reverified! I wanted the world to remember him, so after his death, I decided that Wonkaland must hold a monopoly on all candies to prove he was the greatest. We were almost a monopoly already, but I finally finished the job and bombed out the competition."

"Bought out," said Keerthi.

"Sure. I did not raise my prices after that, but I issued a decree to all the stores that sold my treats to take all candy that wasn't Wonka off the shelves and throw it all away. They were all happy to do it! All other candy companies at the time only made terrible candy that everyone hates! Turkish delight! Candy corn! Circus peanuts! Horrible, all of them. But! After I freed up all that space, my sales did not go up even one lousy percent!"

"Why not," said Tide. She sounded bored.

"I did not know, until I went to the stores and checked if they were keeping their promise to only sell Wonka! They were, but people were going and digging through the trash to eat the discarded candy corn instead of eating my delicious Dongleriffic Delights! I was confused why this was happening, so I abducted enough customers to conduct a study and discovered something shocking. The Law of Sexdecuplentomy!"

Mr. Bucket stopped talking. He wanted someone to ask him what the Law of Sexdecuplentomy was. Keerthi didn't want to, but she also didn't want him to remember that he had been trying to murder her.

"What was it?"

"Sixteen percent!" shouted Mr. Bucket.

"Sixteen percent?" asked Lim.

"Yes," he shouted. "Sixteen percent of all people have bad taste. The group you choose does not matter! They can be old, young, anything! In any large enough group of individuals, sixteen percent of them will incorrectly think that they enjoy what is obviously terrible!"

"This is ridiculous. If a person enjoys something," said Tide, "It is not terrible to them."

"No," said Mr. Bucket. "Turkish delight, for example, is universally despised. Sixteen percent of people would disagree with this but they are wrong."

"It isn't universal if-"

"Baby! Do not cry into my ears. As I was saying! I could not ignore one-sixth of the market, so I knew I had to begin producing terrible candies on purpose. It was impossible... I am too good at candy engineering! Whenever I tried to make something revolting, I always ended up creating scrumptious sweets instead. I was cursed!"

"This room helps you make bad candy?" asked Tide.

"Yes! Filed away is every awful ingredient in the world, from shellac to cellophane. In the hole is the Stringed Shite Sorter, a monster I created. She is only strings and a nose, and she has a sense for the worst that has ever been or will ever be! She smells all the ingredients and brings them into her hole, where she lives, and mixes and cooks and packages them up for consumption. She makes the comparisons between good and bad! She is worth all the VIPs put together!"

One string came out of the hole and wrapped itself around the right foot of Lim's Taranturoo.

"No," said Lim. He turned one of his claws into an electrical saw and cut himself free. Another three came to replace it. "Tell them to stop."

"The Stringed Shite Sorter only sorts shite! Lim! The Taranturoo is not awful, but it must be hiding a secret if it is being sorted! What have you been doing with it?"

Lim made quick work of the three strings around him but hundreds more followed as the Stringed Shit Sorter focused all her attention on the Taranturoo. The claws were overwhelmed.

"Chopin," said Chetan.

"Lim," said Keerthi. "Are you... listening to any music right now?"

"No," he said.

"It's Chopin," said Tide. "Isn't it?"

"If I was listening to music, which I am not, and it were Chopin, which it would not be, it would not matter! The Stringed Shite Sorter only sorts shite! Chopin isn't-"

"Baby! You must cease with that racket! The Stringed Shit Sorter can hear all of it, even if it is only inside your machine! She has excellent ears! You will not be able to escape her strings! Chopin has never made a meaningful contribution to music! Never, ever! You must accept this!"

"Funerals," said Lim, who was almost in the hole. His suit's exterior burst into blue flame, which Keerthi understood he had done on purpose, but the strings did not burn.

"Turn off the music!" shouted Keerthi. "It isn't worth it!"

"What?" shouted Mr. Bucket.

"Marche Funèbre! They play it at every funeral! Every! Funeral! Even at Wonka's! I watched the tapes! You can't tell me that he is that bad of a composer if... stop it! Stop it! I don't have bad taste! He isn't that bad! You are exaggerating! No! No!"

The strings pulled Lim into the hole. He fell fast.

"Baby!" shouted Mr. Bucket. "If only you had thought about it! Why didn't you realize why everyone always cries at funerals?"

Tide and Keerthi looked at Mr. Bucket.

"Do something!" they shouted. "He will be made into candy!"

"Have no fear. Food safety is important to me, and none of it will be sold. After he is broken down into his base components and cooked, the machine will recognize that human flesh has-"

The sound of a cannon exploded from the hole, and a Taranturoo pouch shaped object shot upwards. A parachute expanded out from it and it slowly drifted to the floor.

Mr. Bucket and the children walked to the spot where it landed as it opened up and exposed Lim. All of the wires connecting him to his system had disconnected.

Mr. Bucket bent down and looked at him closely. "I do not see what all the fuss is about! Without the Taraturoo, this is an ordinary baby."

Lim spit in Mr. Bucket's face. He did not wipe it away.

"Hmm," said Mr. Bucket. "This will not do! You are in no condition to continue a tour in this state. You are drooling everywhere!"

Lim spit again. He looked upset.

"I can carry him," said Keerthi. "It isn't any problem."

"No," said Mr. Bucket. "It would be unfair to you. I may be going out on a Lim here, but I think I have a solution that all parties will find agreeable."

Mr. Bucket picked up Lim by the ankles and swung him back into the hole. Keerthi and Tide screamed.

"Thank you," said Mr. Bucket. "It isn't easy to make a shot like that. He didn't even touch rim!"

"You killed him!" screamed Tide. "You killed a baby!"

"He will not die," said Mr. Bucket. "I think. The Stringed Shite Sorter should not have any reason to cook him if he is not in the Taranturoo."

"You threw him in a deep hole! The fall alone will kill him!"

"It will not," said Mr. Bucket. "He is a CHOCOR-2 baby. They are resilient. Even if he did need medical treatment, the floor of the hole would swallow him up and bring him to a Wonkaland non-citizens hospital. He will be fine."

"But-"

"Keerthi! Tide! Mahuika! You must stop with the panicked complaining and vaping! It will not make this situation better.

"I vape," said Mahuika.

Mr. Bucket looked at Keerthi and struck himself on the chest.

"Yes, you do! But do it out of love, not fear. It is what Lim would have wanted."

Mr. Bucket sighed and wiped his sleeves.

"Well, what are you going to do. Next room! It is even more fun than this one!"

"Fun rooms are dangerous rooms," said Chetan. "Take the initiative. Make a change."

"I want to learn about chocolate," Keerthi said. It was the first idea she had.

Mr. Bucket smiled without his tongues.

"Oh! You do? Forget the fun! Education is much more important during a professional tour. What would you like to learn about?"

Keerthi froze.

"Say something," said Chetan.

"Ingredients," said Tide. "We want to know more about the ingredients. In chocolate."

"Smart thinking!" said Mr. Bucket. "Which ingredient would you like to learn about?"

"Um," said Keerthi. "What ingredients are there?"

Mr. Bucket tapped his cane against the ground.

"Many! There is sugar, cocoa butter, cocoa liquor, slavery, lecithin-"

"_What?"_

"Lecithin is an emulsifier, which means that it helps to homogenize and stabilize all the other ingredients. The oil and water components in chocolate would not mix together properly without it. Food science is interesting!"

"Not that!" yelled Keerthi. "The _slavery!"_

"Oh," said Mr. Bucket. "The _slavery. _What of it?"

"It exists! You said you weren't a slaveowner!" said Tide.

"I made no such statement," said Mr. Bucket. "I said that the VIPs are not my slaves. Which they are not."

Keerthi's jaw dropped. She shook her head.

"Why? Why not use normal workers? Why not use the clams? You could have, you could have..."

Mr. Bucket's face twisted into a genuine, soft confusion, as if he could not even understand how Tide and Keerthi had not previously known what he was telling them.

"Keerthi," said Mr. Bucket. "I make _chocolate."_


	17. The Down Rooms

"I have been waiting patiently," said Mr. Bucket. "Finally! I finally get to do it!"

Mr. Bucket took his cane and waved it in front of the three children's faces. He screwed the top off and yeetyooted it into the hole where the Stringed Shite Sorter lived. It was the same hole he had previously yeetyooted a baby into.

Underneath the cane's top was a big red button with words on it. He swung it in front of Mahuika.

"Mahuika! You have a voice! I think! Please vape and read what it says."

Mahuika vaped.

"The Great Glass Elevator," she said.

"Yes! Yes! Correct! Splendid, Mahuika!"

"I vape," said Mahuika.

Mr. Bucket pressed the button. The door to the Comparison Room opened, and in flew a glass elevator with double doors. It landed delicately in front of the children.

"Isn't it great, children? It is the Great Glass Elevator! Mr. Wonka himself created it. It is the most speedsparking elevator in the world! It can go almost anywhere! Up! Down! Left! Right! It uses invisible skyhooks! It can fly high in the air! Dig deep underground! Dive in the ocean! I remember one of you children loving the ocean. It might have been Chauncey."

"Slavery," said Tide in a quiet voice.

"Yes," said Mr. Bucket. "It can also take us to the slavery! Let's go."

"I don't want to go the Slavery Room," said Keerthi.

"Keerthi!" yelled Mr. Bucket, who forcefully ushered all the children into the Great Glass Elevator. "Do you really think I would have a Slavery Room?"

"Yes," said Keerthi. "You said you did."

"I did not!" exclaimed Mr. Bucket. "I would not be able to live with myself if I had a Slavery Room! It would not be nearly enough. I need many rooms for the slavery."

He pressed a button and closed the double doors to the Great Glass Elevator. "Let me see…"

Keerthi looked around the Great Glass Elevator. The walls and even the ceiling were covered with hundreds of rows of small black buttons, each with an accompanying label.

As Mr. Bucket searched for the button that would take them to a place she didn't want to go to, she looked for the button that might take her out of the factory.

Tide read some of them out loud, her voice lacking emotion. Keerthi realized she was trying to distract herself because she did not want to think about the slavery. She joined her.

"The Mourn Syrup Room," said Tide. "Delicious sweetener fresh from the funeral parlor."

"The Tinsulin Room," said Keerthi. "For diabetic robots."

"The Gutterscotch Room. Made from the tears of hopeless alcoholics."

"The Sackharine Room. Sugar-free castration machines."

"The Cigarette Candy Room. Cigarettes that look like candy. Discontinued."

"The Truegat Room. Nougat-based lie detection."

"The Super Laxative Room. A great place to relax."

"The Blood Sugar Room. Vampires with a sweet fang will savor the flavor."

"The Jelly Bean Room. Envy has never tasted better."

"The Jawbreaker Room. I do not believe in false advertising."

"The Vaping Room," said Mahuika. "Vapes." She vaped.

"Here we are!" said Mr. Bucket. "The Down Rooms."

He pressed the button. The double doors to the Great Glass Elevator closed, and the elevator pushed itself through the floor, flying down through further rooms at an unbelievable speed.

"This factory is large, children. When I first began working here it took Mr. Wonka three weeks to give me a proper showing of it all. If I were to show you every room in this factory now, with all the additions we have made since, it would take five years. This machine helps while traveling through it all! I can tell you are all curious about the adventures Mr. Wonka and I enjoyed together in this elevator."

"Slavery," whispered Keerthi.

"I will tell you! I will tell you! There is no need to beg me! After I won the contest, we went to go pick up my family. It was before I knew they were evil people. They were being bothersome, but we brought them along in this very elevator, and we all went into space!"

Tide raised her helmet up. Keerthi had never seen her stand straight, since her religion dictated that she maintain bad posture and always face sea level.

"We have been deep underground since the start of the tour," said Chetan. "She should have started looking up."

"Space," repeated Tide.

"Yes!" said Mr. Bucket. "We went to space. It was fun."

"No one has ever been to space," said Keerthi. "Don't lie to us."

"I am not lying! I was in space."

"Mr. Bucket," said Tide. "Do you think going to space is ethically wrong?"

"Do not be silly," said Mr. Bucket. "You are all smart riddle solvers! You know the secret of astronomy. Do not tell me that you do not!"

"I don't," said Keerthi. "Isn't astronomy bad?"

Keerthi knew that astronomy was wrong, even if she wished they wouldn't feed all the astronomers to an enormous crocodile. It wasn't too surprising to hear Mr. Bucket, who was a murdering clamming slaveowner, tell her that he approved of the practice.

"Not at all! Most astronomers were terrible people who deserved to be fed to the enormous crocodile, but they deserved to be fed to the enormous crocodile because the enormous crocodile ate them, not because they were astronomers. There is nothing wrong with astronomy. I am an astronomer myself! It is not bad."

Keerthi was finished with Mr. Bucket.

"Yes there is!" she exclaimed. "Astronomy is horrible! Evil! Despicable!"

"Why?" asked Mr. Bucket.

Keerthi frowned. She thought about it.

"Oh," said Chetan.

"I don't know," she said. "I mean, there's always-"

"You cannot say it is wrong then! It is foolish to say something is bad without having a good reason to! It will lead you to bad conclusions."

"The secret," said Tide. "You said there was a secret."

"Yes," said Mr. Bucket. "It has to do with the adventure we had in space with President Gilligrass! We saved everyone in the Space Hotel. After it was over, in order to keep everyone safe, the governments of the world all spoke with Mr. Wonka and decided that no one else would be allowed to leave the planet or even learn about space. The Space Hotel was destroyed, and all astronomers were put to death. This was only for the benefit of ordinary people! Normal citizens would be in danger if they knew. They would try and see it for themselves."

"See what?" asked Tide.

"The Vermicious Knids," said Mr. Bucket.

"The Vermicious Knids?"

"Yes, Keerthi. They are the most dreaded monsters in all of space, from the planet Vermes. Mr. Wonka and I only narrowly defeated them! They can travel more than three-hundred thousand miles per hour, millions of miles per day! They are carnivorous and eat everyone they find, other than different Vermicious Knids."

"Do they eat people?" asked Tide. Keerthi noticed that Tide was not talking as if Mr. Bucket were crazy.

"Yes," said Mr. Bucket. "They devoured people aboard the Space Hotel and gobbled up all the peaceful aliens who once lived in our solar system! The only reason they do not swoop up right now and chew us all down is because they would burn up in our atmosphere! Have you ever seen a shooting star? It is not a shooting star! It is a Vermicious Knid burning up after getting greedy and trying to reach us."

Tide sighed and brought her head back down. "Forget it, Keerthi. He's lying."

"I am not!" shouted Mr. Bucket.

"You are. If they were able to move hundreds of thousands of miles per hour through space and not burn up, they would not burn up in our atmosphere."

"Not to be rude," said Keerthi. "I believe you much more than him, but how do you know?"

"My dad is a physicist," she said. "It's physics."

"You are wrong," said Mr. Bucket. "You must be. He told me, he told me…"

He shook his head.

"Yes. You are wrong," said Mr. Bucket. "This is not important! We have almost reached the Down Rooms."

The elevator began to slow down and land.

"Chetan," said Keerthi. "I do not know what an atmosphere is, but he does not sound like he is lying."

"Ask him for Truegat," Chetan said.

"No," she said. "But… I am having trouble remembering."

"Remembering what?" asked Chetan.

"Vermicious," she said. "It means something, but I do not remember what."

"No," said Chetan. "It is a pretend word. People sometimes squashbunt pretend words in their sentences because they think it makes them sound smarter. It doesn't mean anything."

Keerthi knew Chetan was wrong. She had heard it before. There was no doubt in her mind. As the double doors to the Great Glass Elevator reopened, only one question was on her mind.

What did vermicious mean?

_**W**_

The Great Glass Elevator opened. Mr. Bucket and the children walked out. The air tasted like electricity. Keerthi heard a faint humming.

It was the brightest night there ever was. Millions of colored stars swam together in the sky. She did not pretend she could even estimate how many there were.

Keerthi realized that she had been looking up. She forced herself to keep her eyes close to the ground, still wanting to avoid unnecessary astronomy until she had time to think about it further.

"What are stars anyway?" she asked Chetan.

"Space tags," said Chetan.

The floor was boundless metal, and the stars shone brightly on the only attraction she could see. They were standing at the base of a tremendous chocolate tower.

A second guilty peek confirmed that the stars were moving. They were slowly being pulled towards a spot above the tower's peak.

"We're back to this," said Keerthi. "Like in the VIP Room. No ceiling, no walls."

"No," said Mr. Bucket. "The VIP Room is one small room that is designed to seem bigger than it is. The Down Rooms are many rooms stapled together in a way that makes them feel like they are only one. Down Tower itself is inside of thousands of different rooms, and it has hundreds of rooms inside of it. The four of us are standing inside of ten different rooms right now."

Keerthi sighed.

"Do not worry about architecture," said Mr. Bucket. "We are here for the slavery! Let's go inside."

_**W**_

The bottom floor of the Down Room was a sturdy pier, shaped like an oval with bridges connecting it to the entrance and staircases, floating in brown liquid. Clear pipes as large as pillars sucked up the liquid and carried it to the ceiling.

"Is this where you mix the chocolate?" asked Keerthi.

"No," said Mr. Bucket. "Chocolate begins in the Cocoa Room, where I grow and harvest cocoa fruit."

"I read online that you buy your cocoa from Africa and South America, and have it imported to you," said Keerthi.

"I do," said Mr. Bucket. "I buy 95% of cocoa beans that are grown outside of my factory. But I burn all that cocoa and grow my own instead, since my slavery tastes better. If I did not buy it all, people would figure out that I grow my own beans and try to sneak in to discover my methods. After I grow them my beans are removed from the fruit and brought to the Fermentation Room, where they sit until they are ready. They are then cleaned, roasted, and made into cocoa liquor and cocoa butter. It is mixed all together in the Hurricane Room, which is much more efficient than the waterfalls Mr. Wonka once used, then it is brought here so the slavery can be added."

"You could make it without the slavery," said Keerthi.

Mr. Bucket shook his head. "It wouldn't be chocolate."

He took a bite from his cane. With his tongues.

"The Olmec people," he said while lick-chewing. "They were the first to discover cocoa. I do not know much about them, since archaeological evidence is sparse. They had tools which they used to crack open cocoa fruits and drink cocoa from. This means that they had slavery."

"No it does not," said Keerthi. "They might have grown it themselves."

"The Mayans adopted much of Olmec culture, including chocolate. Chocolate was significant in their society and often traded as a currency. Ek Chuaj, the Mayan merchant deity and patron of cocoa, was honored in ceremonies held by cocoa farmers. This would not have been possible without the slavery."

"Yes it would have," said Keerthi.

He took another bite.

"Leave the factory," said Chetan.

"The Aztecs came next, and cocoa started spreading all over once the Europeans boated over. Cocoa was sent all over the globe and made with new kinds of slavery, which produced many delicious chocolates. The Belgians, before Mr. Wonka, were the most famous chocolate makers in all of history. This is because of how much slavery they produced. King Leopold II helped them become world leaders in chocolate with this. He was an evil man but an excellent chocolatier."

"Mr. Bucket," said Tide. "Do you think he was evil because of the unspeakable atrocities he committed, or because he eventually died?"

He laughed.

"You are insane," said Keerthi. "Slavery is-"

Mr. Bucket slammed the end of his cane against the floor, making Keerthi freeze in place. Once she had stopped he pulled it back up and pointed it to the liquid around the pier.

"Keerthi," he said. "What is that?"

"Chocolate."

"Wrong!" he screamed. "It is _worthless_."

He pressed a button on his cane. The handle became a ladle. He walked over to the pier and filled it before giving it to Keerthi.

"Take a drink," said Mr. Bucket. "Do not worry. You are too thin to get stuck in the pipes."

"I'm worried that you will poison me," said Keerthi.

"I will not! Do not worry. It is much more afraid of you than you are of it."

Keerthi did not take a drink. Mr. Bucket shook his head.

"Tide," said Mr. Bucket. "Keerthi is paranoid. I do not know why. Will you drink in her place?"

"No."

Mr. Bucket frowned.

"Mahuika, will _you_ take a drink?"

"I vape," said Mahuika.

"Thank you," said Mr. Bucket. As she opened her mouth to vape, he poured in some of the liquid, and it naturally sunk down her throat.

"I vape," said Mahuika.

"As you can see, she is vaping! Nothing happened. I only want you to have a taste."

Keerthi took the ladle from Mr. Bucket and took a bitty sip. She spit it out.

"What's wrong with it?" screamed Tide.

"It's awful!" Keerthi replied. "It tastes like frogskin and rotten fish! Like cockroaches and slime wanglers!"

"Yes," said Mr. Bucket. "This is what chocolate tastes like before the slavery has been added. It is so bad that the Law of Sexdecuplentomy does not apply to it. Not even the sixteen percent will enjoy it without the slavery."

"You are lying," said Keerthi. "This has no sugar in it! I would have tasted it!"

"No," said Mr. Bucket. "I added sugar, but the natural flavor of cocoa without added slavery overpowers it. You could mix a single cocoa bean into a bowl of sugar, but if you forgot to add slavery, it would suddenly taste worse than rotten mouse guts."

"I know it isn't uncommon for people to eat plain cocoa beans," said Tide. "They say it has health benefits. They wouldn't do it if it tasted like that."

"Slavery can be added at anytime! The companies you can buy those from use traditional methods and add slavery during the growing process instead of at the end like I do. Those cocoa beans have not been fermented and roasted and sugared, but they certainly have slavery in them."

"Even if that was true," said Tide. "You could find a way to make chocolate without slavery."

"Chocolate without slavery? Chocolate without slavery? No," said Mr. Bucket. "That is like saying you could have the ocean without water! Children! There were people like you around before I had my monopoly! Little companies in the Netherlands that tried to go around making 'slavery-free chocolate'. They all went out of business because nobody wanted to buy it! It is not chocolate without the slavery! Chocolate is slavery!"

"If it is," said Keerthi. "I don't want it anymore. I don't care what you think. It's wrong. This is all wrong."

Mr. Bucket took a bite from his cane.

"You can have your morality, or you can have your chocolate. I cannot tell you which one to choose. I can only tell you which one tastes better."

"Let's go on," said Tide. "I don't want to be here."

"I agree," said Chetan.

_**W**_

Aside from the chocolate pipes connecting the floor to the ceiling, the next room of the Down Tower had nothing in it.

"Take it all in, children!" said Mr. Bucket. "Every room from here until the roof is designed like this. This room is actually nineteen rooms. Tide is standing in seven of them. I must have all these rooms inside rooms to store them all."

"Store what?" asked Keerthi. "It's empty. Like you."

"Stop it," said Chetan. "Don't antagonize him."

"I am not empty," said Mr. Bucket. "I am filled with bones! Blood!"

"Peanut brittle," said Keerthi.

"Root beer," said Tide.

"This room is not empty either," said Mr. Bucket. "It is filled with matter!"

"I don't see any matter," said Tide.

"It is there! It is subatomic!" he shouted. "It is physics, Tide. You said your father was a physicist, so I am confident you will know! What is it that everything in the universe is made up from?"

"Atoms," she said.

"Yes!" he said. "Atoms! What is it that atoms are made up of? Each of you say one of them."

"Protons," said Keerthi.

"Neutrons," said Tide.

"I vape," said Mahuika.

"You are all correct," said Mr. Bucket. "I am proud! It is no surprise, with all the riddles you have solved to be here."

"Mahuika is not correct," said Tide. "The answer was electrons."

"Yes," said Mr. Bucket. "But I do not care about electrons, which Mahuika correctly guessed! They have nothing to do with chocolate production. They are such tiny morsels that they have no impact on the taste! Not like neutrons and protons, which together make up almost the entire mass of an atom. Another name for neutrons and protons are nucleons. What are nucleons made of?"

"Quarks," said Tide.

"Yes," said Mr. Bucket. "Quarks! Quarks all have strong tastes, which is why different kinds of quarks are called flavors. Quarks come in six different flavors! There is up, down, top, bottom, strange, and charm."

"Stop lying to us," said Keerthi. "We aren't going to believe your nonsense. Obviously real scientists wouldn't name subatomic particles after random silly words like that."

Tide walked over to Keerthi and whispered into her ear.

Keerthi frowned. "Are you sure?"

Tide nodded.

"I am as honest as the man who invented dry cleaning!" said Mr. Bucket. "Those are the six quarks! When we see matter, it is only made of up and down quarks. All of the others are too embarrassed to show up because of how much they weigh. You can only make them appear with special machines, but they disappear quickly. They taste spicy and insecure. All the nucleons we interact with are only from up and down quarks. A proton is made up of one down quark and two up quarks, and a neutron is made up of one up quark and two down quarks."

"If you are interested in learning more about quarks, you can leave the factory," said Chetan.

"Up quarks taste horrible, as you have experienced, and down quarks taste delicious! They balance out together when they combine to be nucleons, which balance out more when they combine to be atoms, but by themselves they are strong! This is where cocoa becomes important. The matter that creates cocoa is not regular matter. I only have theories as to the reason why, but cocoa is made of what I have dubbed Wonkamatter. The Wonkanucleons, Wonkaprotons and Wonkaneutrons, are different from normal nucleons. A Wonkaproton has three up quarks and zero down quarks, and a Wonkaneutron has three down quarks and zero up quarks. Together they would balance out to form normal atoms that taste normal, since there is still an equal number of ups and downs, but natural cocoa is almost completely made of Wonkaprotons, which only have ups and taste repulsive. There is one more difference still!"

"This isn't physics," said Tide. "This isn't anything."

"Let me finish! Wonkaprotons and Wonkaneutrons can switch states! If they are each exposed to the proper stimulus, a Wonkaproton can become a Wonkaneutron, where all the up quarks become down quarks, and a Wonkaneutron can become a Wonkaproton, where the opposite will happen. If Wonkaneutrons are exposed to the presence of antler necro-neutrinos, which are found only in dead deer, they will become Wonkaprotons and the cocoa will taste even worse. But when Wonkaprotons are exposed to thrall muons, which are produced by slaves, they become Wonkaneutrons! When enough of the Wonkamatter making up the cocoa becomes Wonkaneutrons, the chocolate becomes delicious!"

"No," said Tide. "No."

"Yes," said Mr. Bucket. "It is easy to understand. Murdering deer makes Wonkanucleons fill _up _with happiness and taste worse than snozzcumbers. Slavery makes Wonkanucleons feel _down_, which turns them scrumptious. It's common sense."

"Leave the factory," said Chetan.

_**W**_

Mr. Bucket guided the children into the Down Tower's lift, which began at the second floor of the tower and went all the way to the top.

"It is not great, it is not glass, and it is not an elevator," said Mr. Bucket. "It is a lift. It only goes up and down. This wasn't me trying to be clever by having it be in the Down Tower. It is a tall structure and an ordinary lift was the most convenient option. It would take an athlete two hours to make it to the roof without using this lift."

Mr. Bucket pressed the button that ordered the lift to go to the highest floor.

The elevator did not start moving.

"Mr. Bucket," said Tide. "It isn't working."

"Yes," he said. "It is not."

"Can you make it work?" asked Keerthi.

"No," he said. "It has been broken since I built it. I am not good at building lifts that only go in two directions."

"If it's broken, why did you take us inside of it?" asked Tide.

"It may be down, but it is uplifting."

_**W**_

Mr. Bucket and the three children were not athletes. With breaks, it took them five hours. He would not allow them to leave the Down Tower and use the Great Glass Elevator because it might hurt the feelings of the broken lift, which he said was not sentient.

The climb was arduous. Keerthi realized she had been awake for over a full day. She had never gone that long without sleeping. Chetan kept her awake by giving her good advice.

"Leave the factory," said Chetan.

"No," said Keerthi.

The chocolate pipes on the floor before the roof all met up in the middle of the room to form one giant pipe leading to the roof. Once on the roof, it extended up for about twenty meters and abruptly ended. Excluding the tube to nowhere and the stars, there was nothing else Keerthi could see on the top of the building.

The humming was louder than it had been on the ground.

"The chocolate," said Keerthi. "How are you pumping an uninterrupted supply of liquid into a pipe with a clear end?"

"I am not," said Mr. Bucket. "That is not an end. There is a hole in there like the hole that I put inside your computers. The chocolate is being transported all over the factory through that hole, to be made into bars and cakes and everything else I use it for."

"But what about the slavery?" asked Keerthi. "You didn't mix it with anything. You only pumped it through the Down Tower and pumped it back out."

"The pipes are porous. Not poorous like Chintzy was; they are economically secure, but they have little holes in them. The holes are too small for the chocolate to pass through, but they are big enough for the thrall muons to pass through, and I have stored those thrall muons in every floor in the Down Tower."

"And those thrall muons?" asked Tide. "You said you get them from slavery. Where's the slavery? Is it a trick, like with the leaves?"

Mr. Bucket smiled and reached for the stars. Keerthi in her exhaustion had not noticed how close they were.

In his hands, it was no bigger than an orange. He twisted it in the middle, and it made a clicking noise and went dark, separating into two halves. He allowed them to fall from his hands and hit the floor.

It was ugly and wore no clothes, much smaller than a mouse. It resembled a hybrid between a person and a severed finger, a little white cylinder of flesh with eyes, limbs, and hair.

It blinked, it breathed, and it whimpered at the four giants lording above it.

"They are human, in a way," said Mr. Bucket. "This is the pencil variation. There are six-thousand variations. Each is designed differently! Some of them look like noses, or geckos, or bones. They all have limbs and at least two senses, and one of them is always sight. They need to be able to see themselves."

"No," whispered Keerthi. "Is it…"

"Intelligent?" said Mr. Bucket. He laughed. "Very! It is smarter than all of you. Consider them to be CHOCOR-0. They spend their entire lives in those star-rooms, all alone. Only my voice is with them. For the ones who are deaf I provide Wonkabraille. I have a recording that tells them that they are my child, and they are a baby being transported from a place far away back home in a tiny capsule because of an emergency. I tell them that I love them, which is a lie, and that they need to learn everything they can about earth before they arrive. They spend the first ten years of their lives learning on a screen and being told that I love them and can't wait to see them, and then I turn on the light."

No one asked what the light was.

"The light," said Mr. Bucket. "It is always pressing down on them. It isn't real light. It is painful. If they do not constantly push against it, it burns their skin worse than any fire can. But it isn't hot. It is my own special Wonkasuffering and it is hard to describe. None of you have ever felt anything like it. I invented it."

"Keerthi," said Chetan.

"For one day, the light burns them. They learn that if they do not keep pushing it will kill them, and they always, because of the person I have taught them to be, do not give up. They are fighters! Then I turn off the light. It goes off and the pain ends. My recording comes on. It is my voice again. It tells them that I lied and that I own a chocolate factory and have no children. I show them a picture of what a real human looks like, and I show them a mirror. I tell them they only exist because their suffering produces thrall muons, which make chocolate tasty. They know what chocolate is but have never tasted it. The light turns on again. I tell them that if they live to be forty, I will set them free, and then I never speak to them again. The lights never stop."

He laughed.

"They never give up," he said. "And when they turn forty, they are successfully incinerated, so I know they deserved it all. This one here is thirty-nine. The thrall muons they have produced are stored in the Down Tower until they can be used. This method produces the most thrall muons, since it makes the most Wonkanucleons feel down."

"How many." Keerthi didn't need question marks anymore.

"Each star will make about seven-hundred thrall muons, which is enough for one cocoa bean. It takes five-hundred beans to make one pound of chocolate. I produce ten billion pounds of chocolate every year."

"Keerthi," said Chetan. "Please."

Keerthi looked at the stars. "I'm tired."

Mr. Bucket chuckled and pulled something out of his coat. "If you are tired you should have told me earlier! I have delicious VIP WonkaCoffee gum with me which will wake you right up. Would you like a piece? It is buzzerberry flavored!"

"I am not that kind of tired," said Keerthi.

Tide took a piece and opened the small hatch to her helmet so she could chew it.

"Tide," said Keerthi. "He is going to give the factory to whoever stays the longest. If you get it, you'll stop this?"

Mr. Bucket puckered his lips together as if holding back a laugh. "Contest? Me? Giving out a factory to a suitable heir? I have not the slightest idea what you are discussing, children!"

She nodded. "No question."

"I know," said Keerthi. "I just wanted to hear you say it." She turned to look at Mahuika.

"You too? I know you the least, but I don't think you are bad. You never said a bad word about anybody. You would stop it too?"

"I vape," said Mahuika.

Keerthi looked at Mahuika. She vaped.

"You would," said Keerthi. "I can tell. You are…"

She did not finish the sentence.

"I am your friend," Keerthi said.

She looked at Mr. Bucket. "I want to go home. You said I could have one item at any time if I was willing to leave immediately and the item was reasonable. I want the machine that powers the stars."

"You cannot have it," said Mr. Bucket. "It is an unreasonable request."

"You already knew he was going to say that," said Chetan.

"I want the stars," she said.

"Unreasonable."

"The people inside the stars."

"Unreasonable." He smiled with the tongues and lowered his head to give her a good view. "You can have one."

She picked up the creature on the floor. It trembled in her hands.

"For that," he said. "You want to stop for that?"

"Yes."

He shrugged. He took off his hat and pulled something out of it. It was a small remote with a single button.

"This," said Mr. Bucket. "If you use this device, it will safely bring you back to the entrance of the factory. A flying chocolate unicorn will come and let you ride it to the surface."

Keerthi looked at Tide and Mahuika. "I'm sorry. I feel bad about leaving it all to you to deal with, but I can't do it anymore."

"It's okay," said Tide. "We are close to the end anyway. This way one less person needs to get hurt, and it all finishes faster. It was nice to meet you. We should hang out when this is over. As friends. We can go sailing."

"I vape," said Mahuika.

Keerthi smiled, waved goodbye, and pressed the button. No unicorn came. Instead she collapsed on the floor. The creature she was holding was flung out of her hands and off the side of the tower.

"You said it would bring her back safely!" screamed Tide.

"If she _used_ it, yes! You do not use the Chocolate Unicorn Calling Machine by pressing it! All she had to do was hold it while clicking her heels together three times! This was clearly explained in the hidden contract I was eating while you all were signing the contract in the Contract Room."

"Oh my god," said Tide. "Oh my god."

"You mean Ocean," said Mr. Bucket. "Remember?"

"Fix her!" said Tide. "She's having a seizure!"

"Of course she is," said Mr. Bucket. "It is hard not to when you press the Sugary Seizure Button."

"Stop it," Tide said. "Make it stop! She's in pain!"

"Keerthi's fatal flaw," said Mr. Bucket. "It was the seizures! She must have been a secret seizure addict. She could not hold back her demons. How sad."

He smiled. Keerthi wished she hadn't solved her puzzle.

"Or maybe she just pressed the wrong buttons."

The floor rose over her vision.


	18. The Abstraction Room

Tide watched Mr. Bucket tap-dance on the roof of Down Tower, where Keerthi had been swallowed by the floor.

The choreography was amateur at best.

"I know what you are going to say," said Mr. Bucket. "Keerthi was not my fellow countryman because she was not a citizen. It is true. But this is not the dance of my countrymen! It is slightly different. It is dedicated to people who have seizure addictions."

She walked over to the side of the tower to see where the creature had fallen. She could not see it.

"Do not worry," said Mr. Bucket. "It cannot hurt us. It is too dead."

She sighed. She didn't want to, but she decided to try one more time.

"Did Mr. Wonka have slaves? Did he ever show you them?"

"Yes," said Mr. Bucket. "He employed some of the Oompa Loompas, and the ones that could not sing were made into the slave Loompas who all lived in the Slavery Room. Back then we did have a Slavery Room."

"When you came here," said Tide. "When you were a child. Did you feel bad when he showed you the slaves?"

"Yes, after he explained it to me," said Mr. Bucket. "He did it differently then."

"What was it like, having that revealed to you?"

"I felt terrible for Mr. Wonka. He saw how inefficient it was, but in those times with how little we knew about physics he could do no better. He knew that slavery made chocolate better, but he did not know how. When I was older, I discovered Wonkanucleons and created all this, and he had never been prouder of me."

Charles Bucket was fine with slaves, but Tide was sure _Charlie _Bucket would not have been. He was creating new memories to satisfy his current view of reality.

Reason was off the table. People did not reason with root beer and peanut brittle. Men made of candy were not like men made of meat.

"I can tell from your silence that you are glum!" said Mr. Bucket, who at last ended his tribute. "Do not be! Miss Too-Good-For-Omelas will be fine. The non-citizens hospital does fantastic work! We have the best candy-based healthcare in the world!"

Tide did not want to hear about the candy-based healthcare. "Can we move on?"

"Yes," said Mr. Bucket. He leapt off the tower.

Tide was proud of herself for not being surprised. The Great Glass Elevator flew back up seconds later and Mr. Bucket was inside of it, grinning.

She saw his tongues flicker, and it dawned on her. She knew Charles Bucket.

She knew Charles Bucket because she knew _herself_.

_**W**_

Mr. Bucket, Tide Honey, and Mahuika Jewel entered the Great Glass Elevator from the roof of Down Tower. The double doors closed.

"It is spozzling," said Mr. Bucket. "We only have two children left! We started with six! How does that happen?"

"Murder," said Tide.

"This Great Glass Elevator is too loud," said Mr. Bucket. "It makes it too easy to miss it when children falsely accuse candy trillionaires of crimes they haven't committed."

He laughed.

"I know we are sad, but we cannot have four little accidents spoiling our fine adventure," said Mr. Bucket. "We will press ahead! But where to? Few places in Wonkaland can rival the magnificence of the Down Rooms."

He snapped his fingers. "Insporkation has struck me! I will let you choose. Mahuika! Vape and press any button you choose!"

Mahuika vaped and pressed one of the buttons who knows it could have been any of them.

The elevator lifted from the ground and flew up.

"A surprising choice," said Mr. Bucket.

"It isn't," said Tide.

"Yes, maybe, who knows. Tide, why don't you choose our next destination instead?"

Tide made her decision. The Great Glass Elevator took a sudden right.

"The Dentistry Room?" asked Mr. Bucket. "No! We are not going to the Dentistry Room! Can you not read the label next to the button? It is out of operation!"

Tide had chosen the room _because _it was out of operation.

"We do not make those products anymore! The candies that drilled into your teeth for cavities sold poorly. It is only used for storage now."

"You said I could choose," said Tide.

"Yes," said Mr. Bucket. "You did choose! I am only not allowing you to have your choice. It is an important distinction."

He pressed his own button. The Great Glass Elevator stopped and went down.

_**W**_

"It was once the Television Room," said Mr. Bucket. "It is where Mr. Wonka created Wonkavision, which I developed into Wonkavision 3.0, the same technology I used to create my puzzle. Now it is the Abstraction Room. It is where I abstract what is needing to be abstracted."

Tide saw that Mr. Bucket had also stopped himself from decorating. The Abstraction Room was as barren as the Potato Room, with a one potato margin of error.

"Children!" shouted Mr. Bucket. "Ignore the two potatoes on the floor! We are not here for them."

"There isn't anything else here," said Tide.

"Hold on," said Mr. Bucket. He whistled.

The door to the Abstraction Room slammed shut.

"There we are," said Mr. Bucket. "Good."

Mr. Bucket turned into vinegar and became a puddle.

"Children," said Mr. Bucket. "I am not a puddle. I have only been abstracted."

"I vape," said Mahuika.

"Yes," said Mr. Bucket. "You do. Tide! Mahuika! This room is not like any other room you have seen today. What I do in this factory is science and what I do in this factory is art. This room is not science and it is not art. It is translation and execution. There are no rules in here."

"How so?" asked Tide.

The pen that Mahuika was vaping from winked out of existence. She took out another and vaped.

It smelled like vinegar.

"In this room," said Mr. Bucket. "I translate, and it is executed."

"So what," she said.

"So everything," said Mr. Bucket. "When I am translating, time can be backwards, and matter can be created and destroyed. Energy can come from nowhere. I can exist without a body! I can live forever! Enpoopy can become negenpoopy! I have already abstracted you and Mahuika from time, and your bodies are homeostaying without burning calories. It is hard, but I can do it."

"If you can create matter," said Tide. "Why have the slaves? Why have anything else? You could have the chocolate without any of the work."

"Translation is only possible in the Abstraction Room. If I worked hard, I could abstract as far as I wanted, but it might take me millions of years and I don't want to do it. I want to leave."

"Leave?"

"I followed the formula enough," said Mr. Bucket. "This far should satisfy. Children! No need for pretending anymore, we know what this is! I am going to leave you for an amount of time, you can choose for how long. When one of you has had enough, click your heels together three times, and you will have a chocolate stroke. The other child will win. Goodbye."

"What?"

Mr. Bucket did not answer.

"Mahuika," said Tide. "Vape and immediately ask Mr. Bucket to let you leave the factory."

Mahuika vaped. She did not ask Mr. Bucket to leave the factory.

"Didn't think so," said Tide.

"I vape," said Mahuika.

_**W**_

EIGHT DAYS LATER

Tide woke up.

"I hate you," she said, looking at Mahuika. She didn't need to sleep in the Abstraction Room, but it was one of the best ways to pass the time, next to telling Mahuika to vape and play kick-the-potatoes with her.

"I vape," said Mahuika. She vaped.

Tide could have Mahuika do almost anything if she also told her to vape, but she wouldn't click her heels together. She wouldn't do anything that would make her lose. Tide had tried pushing Mahuika's heels together herself, and Mahuika walked away and vaped.

She wanted to win, Tide understood.

"Stop pretending," she said. "Keerthi and Chili were right. There must be more to you than vaping."

"I vape," said Mahuika.

"There," she said. "I think there must be. But it isn't what Keerthi thought. If I thought you were good, I would let you win. But you aren't good. You are rotten. I'm sure of it. There is something nasty in you. Something vile. I can't let you have the factory."

"I vape," said Mahuika.

_**W**_

THIRTY DAYS LATER

Tide hadn't spoken to Mahuika in two weeks, but she suddenly started. She didn't know why.

"I'm making it all up as I go along," she said. "I know the ocean isn't god."

Mahuika vaped.

"My mom likes _literature_. My dad likes _science_. When I was little, I loved the ocean, and I still do. But they always… they always tried to make it about what they liked. My mom wanted me to appreciate it from a literary perspective! My dad wanted me to appreciate it from a scientific perspective! I didn't care! I liked it both ways, but they didn't listen to me when I said it. They didn't _fight_ about it, but they were always trying to make it about something _bigger_. I didn't want it to be bigger! It's the ocean! What's bigger than that?"

"I vape," said Mahuika.

"I decided I would go and get revenge. I went and told them that I appreciated the ocean as a religious extremist, which they would have hated. They didn't believe me, so I ran away and started my religion. I took control of a fishing village and had my members stop paying tribute to a local cartel, which gave us the funds we needed to operate. We left the country and went to Russia. I didn't have any _plans_. I stood up and said stuff and everybody liked it! I don't know why they did. I just wanted to teach my parents a lesson."

Mahuika vaped.

"It was going great, but the cartel sent undercover polar bears, and they chewed up three of my followers. They were very old and would have died soon anyway, but it's still my fault! I was supposed to protect them. I only meant to keep it going for a few months or until they apologized to me, but the bear attack changed it! I couldn't stop and tell them it was all a joke after that! How can you convince someone to stop liking something you made? I thought they would go away if I made it make less sense but they liked that even more!"

"I vape," said Mahuika.

"I have no idea what I'm doing," said Tide. "JUROR is right about how he does it. I hate dealing with endings."

She smiled. "But I liked the attention. Mr. Bucket does too. I don't think he believes what he says. He might believe that _he_ believes that, but he doesn't. He just wants to speak. The content doesn't matter."

"I vape," said Mahuika.

"We're the worst ones," said Tide. "Having nothing to say, and saying it."

She looked at the potatoes.

"I miss them. They weren't trying to make me feel bad."

_**W**_

ONE HUNDRED AND SEVEN DAYS LATER

"No!" Tide screamed.

The potatoes had burst. It was a miracle they held out as long as they had.

"You kicked them too hard! You idiot!"

"I vape," said Mahuika.

Tide sat on the floor. There would be no more kick-the-potatoes.

Passivity no longer sufficed.

"Mahuika," said Tide. "I am going to give you one more chance. Leave the factory."

"I vape," said Mahuika.

Tide looked at her.

"There was a man named Henry Sugar," said Tide. "I read about him. That is the silly pretend name people call him, but he was a real person. He could see the world without his eyes. Anyone can learn to do it, if they practice for decades, but he was a special person. It is rare, but some people can learn to have powers like his with much less practice. It comes naturally to them. My mom is one of these people."

"I vape."

"I am one of these people too. My mom moves stuff with her mind. I talk to animals. These powers are real, and all you need to do to get them is only focus on one thing. Henry Sugar focused on a candle. My mom focused on someone she hated. If I practiced focusing, I bet I could have powers like they have. I could see the world without my eyes. I bet I could even peek inside your head, Mahuika, and find out who you are."

Mahuika vaped.

"If you do not leave, that is what I will do. I have as much time as I need. Will you leave?"

She did not. Tide began to practice.

She focused on Mahuika and only Mahuika, with a zero Mahuika margin of error.

_**W**_

ONE THOUSAND FOUR HUNDRED AND SIXTY SIX DAYS LATER

Tide cleared her throat. She had not moved a muscle in years.

"It is finished," she said. She had forgotten her own voice. "I know I will be able to peek inside your head. Will you leave the factory?"

"I vape," said Mahuika. She vaped.

"I understand," said Tide.

She focused only on Mahuika, and peeked inside her head, and


	19. The Invitation

"Is it a boy?"

The doctor did not answer. He had moments ago delivered a baby, and this time not by mail, which had gotten him in heaps of trouble at the last hospital he worked at.

He had done everything right. The birth had gone smoothly, and he didn't have to cut anyone's tummy open, and there was only a little poo on his shoes and usually there was much more poo.

He was holding the baby. He wondered what he was supposed to do next. He remembered that the people on the instruction tapes had mentioned this. If nobody was bleeding out, and nobody was this time, he was supposed to see if the baby was breathing and wipe it up a little, check again for poo, and hand it to the mommy and the daddy so they could feel the feeling.

He was holding the baby, and he tried to check if it was breathing and he could not. He did not know if the baby was breathing and he did not know if the baby wasn't breathing.

The people from the tapes brought up breathing very frequently. It was all the rage with babies. They did not explain how to tell if one wasn't breathing, only what to do.

If they were a five hundred dollar value, why hadn't they taught him how to tell?

"Is it a girl? It's a girl, isn't it?"

He realized that he was holding a broken baby. He had held babies that weren't broken and it wasn't like this. They were like grocery bags with heartbeats, but he did not feel like he was holding a grocery bag with a heartbeat. He felt like he was holding a broken baby.

He didn't know if the mommy or daddy could tell. They were bound to find out when he handed it over and it would be back to the mail room with him. No one would care that he watched all the tapes twice, they only wanted him to have a silly piece of paper.

Maybe they wouldn't want it? No, they would. It was their first time having a baby. Once he had brought cookies to a dinner party and everyone had to have at least one, except the people who were on a diet. It was like that. The mommy couldn't have been on a diet with how big her tummy was.

"I am holding a baby," he said.

"Yes," said the daddy. "We know."

It was working! They didn't know he broke the baby! He only had to keep the charade up until they forgot about it and left.

"I had a hard time making it," said the mommy. "I want to hold it so I can tell it that I love it. Can I hold it, doctor?"

The doctor frowned. Love was always giving him trouble.

"No," said the doctor. "I need to perform a test."

"A test?" asked the daddy. "What kind of test? Is the baby okay?"

"I screwed it up," said the mommy. "I knew it would come to this. I mess everything up."

The doctor thought about blaming the mommy and telling her that _she_ broke the baby, but decided that it wouldn't be right. He was about to confess that he broke their daughter until he thought about what he was about to confess.

They had a daughter. They had a daughter! He did know what it was! He was wrong about it being broken. He only needed to be inventive with his wording.

"Forget the test," said the doctor. "You have a daughter!"

He was excited. The mail room again grew distant in his mind.

"You have a daughter!" he exclaimed. "You have a breathing daughter! You have a healthy breathing daughter!"

"Good," said the daddy. "We wanted the breathing kind. All the cool babies are doing it."

The doctor gave the baby over to the daddy. As he did he saw the daddy search the baby's eyes and become quiet. He knew that the daddy was having the same problem he had.

"You have a daughter," reminded the doctor.

The daddy shook his head. "Yes," he said. "I have a daughter. I have a healthy daughter. I love her."

He handed it over to the mommy. It happened again. The daddy put his hand on the mommy's shoulder. "We have a daughter. We have one wonderful daughter."

"Yes," she said. "Her name will be."

She did not finish, but not for the purposes for art. She could not finish. The doctor helped her.

"You have a daughter," he said. "You love her. You love…"

The mommy smiled. "I love my daughter Mahuika."

_**W**_

Mrs. Jewel was holding Mahuika, who she had loved consistently for one year. Mr. Jewel was sitting next to her, holding little Marama, who was cheerfully gnawing on a bloody telescope. They all were facing towards a much more comfortable chair where a woman listened to them speak.

"Something is wrong," said Mr. Jewel. "Something is wrong and she refuses to talk about it."

"Nothing is wrong," said Mrs. Jewel. "Nothing is wrong and he keeps wanting to talk about it."

"Mr. Jewel," said the woman. "What do you think is wrong?"

"Nothing," said Mrs. Jewel.

The woman frowned.

"Mrs. Jewel," she said. "Maybe something is wrong, and maybe something is not. Conversing about it will not harm anything."

"I am a good mother," she said. "I have two wonderful daughters and I love them both."

Mrs. Jewel knew she was a good mother because she knew what a good mother was not. When she grew up her house was filled with screaming and throwing and two people who did not ever give her the feeling and told her it was her fault. Mr. Jewel was the first person to give the feeling to Mrs. Jewel and it helped her learn why being alive was tolerable.

She was not going to cheat her children out of the feeling like she had been. They were going to feel the feeling everyday and she was going to prove that it meant something. If she did it right they were going to give her the feeling back one day and it was going to make up for the wait.

Nothing was wrong. She loved Mahuika, she read to Makuika, she sang to Makuika. She gave Mahuika her vitamins and burped her and fed her and always remained patient. All she had to do was wait and she would feel the feeling.

"I have never seen Mahuika smile," said Mr. Jewel. "I have never heard her cry. Marama is two months old but she laughs and cries and has already assassinated three astronomers. The books give lists of what Mahuika should be doing by now and I have not seen her doing any of it."

"Have you witnessed any developmental delays yourself, Mrs. Jewel?"

"I'm not a bad mother," she said. Her voice was croaksunk. "I love her. I want the best for her."

"I never said that you didn't," said Mr. Jewel.

"We know you do," said the woman. "She is…"

The woman stopped and cleared her throat.

"We know you love her," she continued.

"I never hurt her," said Mrs. Jewel. "I did everything right."

"It isn't a matter of right or wrong. I speak to many people in your situation, and they care about their children as much as you do. All this means is that Mahuika needs extra attention and care _now, _when it can make the biggest difference."

"I broke her," said Mrs. Jewel. "It's my fault. I ruined her life."

"You didn't," said Mr. Jewel.

"You didn't," said the woman. "This isn't a matter of doing right or wrong. Her life would not be ruined if we didn't discover this soon enough for early intervention, and we did."

"Early intervention?"

"Ear-ly intervention," stressed the woman. "The ear candles will remove the toxins."

_**W**_

The ear candles did not remove the toxins.

Over the next year, Mr. and Mrs. Jewel went to meetings with people who told them that they knew what was wrong with Mahuika and how they would fix it. Mrs. Jewel hated the meetings, but she wanted to be a good mother. If her daughter needed help, she was going to provide it.

There were many ways to help, according to the people at the meetings. Pills and therapy were a popular suggestion, as were chocolate incense and royal jelly exposure. Some thought she needed potassium or fresh fruit or larger ear candles. One man ordered them to fashion a necklace made from potatoes and have Mahuika wear it.

They tried everything. The potatoes failed to take root, the chocolate incense went up in smoke, and the candles caused a wicked catastrophe. It was all fruitless except for the fresh fruit but that didn't work either.

At one meeting a man told them a true story about a baby who was born to a woman who had three other babies who all died. The baby was sickly and frail and the mother was terrified that he would die, but she prayed and he lived. The man asked if she thought that was good and Mrs. Jewel said yes and the man screamed and told them that the baby was Adolf Hitler. Mr. Jewel asked him what the point of the story was and he told them that they didn't understand subversive storytelling.

They stopped going to meetings.

Seven months after her third daughter Makareta was born, Ms. Jewel was doing laundry when she heard a bloodcurdling scream from the room where her children were playing. She took ten more minutes to finish folding towels and grab a cup of tea before strolling over to check on them.

An old woman in a topcoat was on the floor, dead. She had a towel wrapped around her nose and mouth. Marama was standing over her head holding an empty bucket, and Maraketa was dutifully taking notes with a crayon from the comfort of her high chair.

A nearby bed supported Mahuika, who silently stared at the corpse.

Marama dropped the bucket and smiled. "I did it, mommy! A hundred! A hundred astronomers!"

"I'm proud of you, Marama," said Mrs. Jewel. "But remember what we talked about with daddy? We only waterboard astronomers on the patio. We don't want the floors getting dirty."

"Sorry," she said. "I forgot."

"It's okay," said Mrs. Jewel. She pinched Marama's cheek. "Did you let your sisters help like I asked?"

She nodded. "Makareta threw a book at her!"

"Learning," said Makareta.

"Lovely," said Mrs. Jewel. She wasn't worried about Makareta. "And what about Mahuika?"

Marama frowned. "She…"

Marama looked at her older sister. "I tried."

Mrs. Jewel sighed and slumped her shoulders.

Marama walked up to her leg and hugged it. "Don't be sad, mommy."

"I am not," she lied. "I need more sleep. Your next sister is already kicking with economic savvy."

Marama looked deep into her eyes.

Mrs. Jewel saw that her daughter was trying to make her feel the feeling. She wanted to feel the feeling but she knew she didn't deserve it. Good mothers deserved to feel the feeling and she was not a good mother. She failed her first daughter, and until she could have all her daughters feel the feeling for themselves she refused to feel it on her own.

Mrs. Jewel's mouth created sounds forming words. She tried to make Marama feel the feeling without feeling the feeling herself, but no one ended up feeling anything.

_**W**_

"I can't thank you enough," said Mrs. Jewel as she walked through the door to her house and handed the young sitter her evening's pay. "If you want to do this again next time-"

"Always," said Villemain. "Anytime."

Mrs. Jewel was happy to have found Villemain. Mr. and Mrs. Jewel did not have many date nights, mostly owing to the difficulty attached in locating a qualified sitter. Five _normal _children could be a handful, but her girls offered a greater challenge than most contenders could rise to meet.

One sitter had refused to invest in Mariana's latest startup. Although he made it through the first evening, he never answered Mrs. Jewel's calls to return, too embarrassed to show his face around the one year old after her business made it to the Fortune 500. Another was too starstruck by Manaia's status as the most popular three month year old influencer on the planet to feed her dinner. Three others were too intimidated by Makareta's intellectual prowess to allow her to lecture them on the history of babysitting, and three more were roasted alive by Marama after she discovered they were disguised astronomers trying to avenge their fallen colleagues.

Most left because of Mahuika. They never said why, but Mrs. Jewel knew. They thought it was sad, the entire situation. Too sad to be around and think about when life was short.

Villemain always invested, listened to the lectures, received influence, and allowed Marama to try and pull her face off to see if she was wearing a mask. She never did anything with Mahuika, but that was how it went. All she needed to be able to do was tolerate her, and Villemain did.

Mr. Jewel walked in behind Mrs. Jewel. Villemain had been there to greet them at the door with Mariana and Makareta. He pointed to Mariana's mouth.

"What is that?" he asked.

"It is a vape pen," said Villemain. "I asked Mrs. Jewel if I could give them to the children before you left. They have been vaping all evening."

Mariana vaped.

"Is that a good idea?" asked Mr. Jewel. "Isn't vaping dangerous?"

"No," said Villemain. "Vaping is healthy for everyone including young children. It is good to know how to vape from a young age! If you learn how to vape when you are little and you ever become addicted to those nasty cigarettes, you will have an easy way to taper yourself off!"

"It's true," said Mrs. Jewel. "I read all about it in the informational pamphlets printed by the companies that produce e-juice."

Marama ran into the room. Her eyes were wet with tears and vape mist.

"Everyone! It happened! Mahuika! She…"

Instead of trying to finish her sentence she grabbed her mother and father by the arm and dragged them in the direction of Mahuika's room. Everyone followed, Manaia in Villemain's arms.

They found Mahuika on her bed. A vape pen was inside her mouth, smoke leaving through her nose.

"She vapes," said Marama.

"She vapes," said Makareta.

"She vapes," said Mariana.

"She vapes," said Villemain.

"She vapes," said Mr. Jewel.

"She vapes," said Mrs. Jewel.

Mahuika vaped.

"I vape," said Mahuika.

"Wait," said Marama. "There's more."

She raised her voice. "Mahuika! Vape and stand up!"

Mahuika vaped and stood up.

"Now vape and say hello," said Marama.

"Hello," said Mahuika. "I vape."

She vaped.

_**W**_

"I vape," said Mahuika. Mahuika vaped and took a drink from her milk carton.

A group of preteens walked up to the table where Mahuika was vaping, and there was alive silence in the lunchroom. Everyone knew the table belonged to Rosey and her friends, the popular kids. No one else was allowed to sit there, especially not some new girl.

Rosey, the girl standing front and center of the gang, stared at Mahuika.

"Summer," she said. "I think I may be going crazy. Please tell me that what I think is happening is not happening."

"You know I want to," said Summer. "But it is. Your space has been taken by _something."_

Mahuika vaped.

"Move," said Summer. "That seat is reserved for the most popular girl at school."

Mahuika vaped.

"It's the first day of school, and not everyone knows the rules yet, so we'll be nice," said Summer. "Stand up right now and we will only have everyone bully you for one year instead of three."

"I vape," said Mahuika.

"Nobody is allowed to talk to Rosey like that," said Summer. "No one disrespects the most popular girl at school!"

Rosey smiled. "Relax, Summer. I can handle this."

She stuck her hand out and pulled the pen from Mahuika's lips. She waved it in front of her face and tossed it high in the air. It landed inside a garbage can.

"My mom is on the school board," said Rosey. "My dad assists in the management of a small cheese distribution plant. I'm _untouchable_. What are you?"

Mahuika took out another vape pen and vaped.

"I vape," said Mahuika.

Someone rested their hand on Rosey's shoulder. "If you wanted to be on show, you should have asked me, not my sister."

Rosey recognized the voice. It sounded the way good chocolate tasted when it was brutally assassinated for learning about astronomy. It belonged to Marama Jewel, the star of 'Astro-No-More', the international reality show where she went around brutally assassinating people for learning about astronomy. It was her first day at their middle school.

Nobody knew she had a sister. Some people in the lunchroom began to murmur. It was the first time anyone had ever stood up to Rosey.

She started shaking. "Your… sister?"

"My sister," Marama said. "I told her to vape and sit and drink her milk. Do you want her _not _to vape, sit, and drink her milk? I hope not. It sounds like something an astronomer would want."

"No," said Rosey, who knew that even her father's incredible power as the assistant manager of a small cheese distribution plant wouldn't be enough to save her if she got on Marama's bad side.

"Good," said Marama. She spoke loudly enough for everyone in the room to hear her. "Remember. It's like she said. That seat is reserved for the most popular girl at school, and no one disrespects the most popular girl at school."

Rosey and her friends abandoned their post, and lunch conversation resumed. Marama sat across from Mahuika and put a piece of fudge on her tray.

"Happy birthday, Mahuika. Thirteen is a big number. Vape and eat your fudge."

"I vape," said Mahuika, who vaped and ate her fudge.

_**W**_

On the evening of Mahuika's thirteenth birthday, Marama and Mr. Fantasticer Fox were in Mahuika's bedroom, having a nuanced debate over how they should handle an astronomer they had captured on their last mission. He was old and senile, and had not practiced astronomy in years, which made it hard for the pair to decide what they should do with him. Mr. Fantasticer Fox thought he should be fed deadly spiders, while Marama thought he should be fed _to _deadly spiders, a crucial distinction.

Mr. Fantasticer Fox's true identity was a secret, even from Marama's family, and whenever he came over to see Marama they met in Mahuika's room. It was the most secure room in the house, since no one aside from Mahuika ever went there, with a one Marama margin of error.

Marama had taken care of her older sister since she found out about the trick at four years old. It wasn't hard to deal with her after that, since all she had to do was tell her to vape and take care of herself and do her schoolwork, but no one else cared enough to do it. None of the other sisters saw Mahuika as anything but a nuisance and her mother and father had given up years ago. The job naturally fell to Marama.

It didn't matter if Mr. Fantasticer Fox was seen by Mahuika, because she vaped.

"It won't be as cool as you think," said Marama. "He would choke to death long before they start making webs out of his stomach lining."

He growled.

"It's a waste of good spiders and you know it," she replied.

Mr. Fantasicer Fox's ears perked up. He looked at the door, and pushed Marama underneath Mahuika's bed, jumping down after her.

The door opened as soon as they hit the floor, and Marama's expertly trained nose smelled alcohol.

It was her mother.

She watched Mrs. Jewel's feet slowly amble over to the edge of the bed, stepping over the unconscious body of the astronomer the pair had been arguing over. Marama didn't need to hear her sipping to know that she was holding a wine glass. She was never _not_ holding a wine glass.

"Happy birthday, Mahuika," said Mrs. Jewel.

"I vape."

She took a long drink.

"It's time for my present," said Mrs. Jewel. "Vape and stand up."

Marama saw Mahuika stand.

"Vape and say it."

"It," said Mahuika.

She laughed, unhappily. "Vape and tell me that you love me."

"I love you," said Mahuika.

Mrs. Jewel took another sip, dropping the wine glass on the floor. A shard bounced on the floor and hit Marama's face, giving her a small cut. Many more shards cut into the astronomer's legs.

"For real," she said. "This year, vape and say it for real," she said.

"It for real," said Mahuika.

"Vape and feel the feeling," she said.

Marama had tried that too, as had everyone in the family. It didn't work. It was impossible to direct her to take any action that would create true autonomy or interfere with her vaping. Extended or complicated commands didn't work either. Each order was only good for several hours.

Mrs. Jewel already knew that.

"I vape," said Mahuika.

Mrs. Jewel stopped talking. Marama peeked her head out enough to see what was happening, and saw that her mother had taken the vape pen from her daughter's mouth and placed it in her own. Mahuika took out another for herself.

Mrs. Jewel vaped. Mahuika vaped.

"I read all the books about children they said you were like," she said. "You aren't one of them. They are different and they can be hard to understand but they feel the feeling. Not you. You never felt it. I wouldn't have cared how, you could have felt it in a million ways. But you didn't."

"I vape," said Mahuika.

"I watched a documentary about a mother who had a son who couldn't feel the feeling either. He was born without a brain, only a flimsy little stem. He lived for ten years like that."

Mahuika vaped.

"I thought it was like that, for awhile. But it isn't. She can be happy, a little. She knows that he can't feel the feeling but if he could he would. I don't have that."

"I vape," said Mahuika.

"You are choosing to do this," she said. "You are choosing to vape. I have seen you go to school and mimic conversations. Marama tells you to do your homework and somehow it is done. I know you are smart enough to learn and pretend and operate a large, non-password protected computer with access to the internet. But you don't want to."

"I vape," said Mahuika.

"You aren't my daughter," said Mrs. Jewel. "Your father stopped caring about you before I did and he started talking about what a good father he was after that, which I never understood, but now I do. I'm a good mother. Marama kills, Makareta learns, Mariana buys, and Manaia influences. They also feel the feeling, which you don't. It's your choice."

Mahuika vaped. Mrs. Jewel returned the pen she had taken to Mahuika's mouth, making a pair.

"I don't care about you," she said. "You are not my daughter."

She turned around and stumbled out of the room, closing the door behind her.

"I'm a good mother," she said. "I have four daughters. Four wonderful daughters."

_**W**_

Mahuika vaped.

The home was empty, with a one Mahuika margin of error. The others were away for the day on a family trip to an amusement park. Marama told her vape and stay in the living room until they came back, and to eat a sandwich and drink water at noon.

She vaped.

It was raining.

She vaped.

She vaped.

She vaped.

She vaped.

She vaped.

She vaped.

She vaped.

She vaped.

She vaped.

She vaped.

The rain was coming down hard.

She vaped.

She vaped.

She vaped.

She vaped.

She vaped.

She vaped.

It wasn't noon yet.

She vaped.

She vaped.

She vaped.

She vaped.

She vaped.

She vaped.

She vaped.

She vaped.

She vaped.

It was almost noon.

She vaped.

She vaped.

She vaped.

She wanted to know why she vaped.

She vaped.

She wanted to know why she vaped.

She had never before wanted to know why she vaped.

She vaped.

It was different from the sandwich. The sandwich came from outside. All of Marama's instructions came from outside. Nothing ever came from inside except vaping.

This was also coming from the inside.

Vaping came from inside. She vaped.

She wanted to know why she vaped. Why did she vape?

She did not care about why she wanted to know why she vaped. She only wanted to know why she vaped.

She vaped.

She vaped.

She vaped.

She vaped.

She wanted to know why she vaped.

She vaped.

She did not know how to find out why she vaped.

She vaped.

She vaped.

She vaped.

It was noon.

She vaped.

She got up to make a sandwich.

She vaped.

She vaped.

She wanted to know why she vaped.

_**W**_

_Mahuika Jewel,_

_I know why you vape. _

_I live alone on Stewart Island, six miles down the coast from Oban. If you go to the city of Bluff, there is a man holding a silk umbrella waiting for you near the town's general store. This man owns a boat, and I have paid him handsomely to ferry you to me._

_Go to him and tell him who you are, and he will bring you to me. I will tell you why you vape._

_To the Jewels, should you find this letter, understand that I mean Mahuika no harm. She will be brought home shortly after we meet. Maybe words exist that would allow me to show you how sorry I am for what I did, but I will never find them._

"What does it say next?" asked Mariana.

"Nothing," said Makareta. "It ends there. There's no signature."

"I want to know why I vape," said Mahuika.

Makareta, Mariana, and Manaia had caught Mahuika trying to leave the house. They stopped her from walking out and demanded an explanation, fearful that their mother had told her to vape and drown herself. Instead of answering she handed them a letter and a broken envelope instructing the reader to vape, tear it open, and read what was inside.

"She's never done this before," said Manaia.

Mahuika tried walking around them and leaving through the door. They locked it.

A war between the CHOCOR babies had begun weeks earlier. New York and Lima had already been destroyed in Great Tantrums. The war hadn't evolved beyond minor skirmishes in New Zealand but the entire country and most of the world was under lockdown. No one was allowed to leave their homes unless it was absolutely necessary or they felt bored.

"We can't let her leave," said Mariana. "It isn't conducive to a scalable risk management factor. Her customer value would plummet. We should touch base with Marama and strategize."

"No," said Makareta. "She's too emotional when it comes to Mahuika. She'll feel bad for her. She might even try to take her. I think this is a scam."

"It might be a way to get to me," said Manaia, who was more important than everyone else. "I am more important than everyone else. I influence."

"She influences," said Mariana.

"She influences," said Makareta.

"I vape," said Mahuika. "I want to know why I vape."

"What do you want to do about it?" asked Manaia.

"Burn the letter," said Makareta. "Lock her in her room until she stops saying it."

A small hand punched through the front door and snatched the letter away from Makareta. Marama pulled it through and read it before unlocking and opening the door.

"Vape and follow me, Mahuika," Marama said. She vaped and followed.

The youngest three sisters helplessly watched the pair walk off in the distance, disappearing into a vape cloud of mystery.

_**W**_

The Auckland Islands are a tiny archipelago in New Zealand. The largest island in the Auckland Islands is Auckland Island. Auckland, the most populous city in New Zealand, is not located on Auckland Island, which is in the Auckland Islands. No one lives on the Auckland Islands.

The city of Auckland is located on the ingeniously named North Island, which is north of marginally less clever South Island, which is north of Stewart Island, the island where the letter came from.

Once the girls walked far enough to leave the Auckland suburbs, Marama reached into her pocket and recovered a soft hairy egg. She found a good patch of dirt on the roadside and forced it into the ground, where it sprouted into a large tame Kiwi bird. Marama and Mahuika rode the bird until they reached the sea and took the ferry to South Island.

Another long bird ride took them to the town of Bluff, and they came across an elderly man sitting alone on a bench near the general store, holding a silk umbrella and whistling with his eyes closed. He had deep wrinkles and a bushy mustache. They dismounted and approached him.

"Excuse me," said Marama. "We were told to seek you out."

The man ignored her and continued to whistle.

"I vape," said Mahuika.

He stopped whistling and opened his eyes. "Anything else?"

"I want to know why I vape," said Mahuika.

"Good," he said. "Come with me and I will escort you to him. He will tell you what you want to know."

"She won't be going anywhere until you tell me who you are," said Marama.

"Isn't that a thought," said the man. He smiled.

"I will take your umbrella and put it inside your throat and open it," said Marama.

The man stood up and stretched, scratching at his back with the umbrella. "I am only his messenger, little killer, and not one to shoot. I was instructed to wait for your sister and bring her to see him. I don't know why."

"Who is he?"

"A private man," said the man. "I say man, but perhaps not. It is hard to tell. He pays me to fetch special items for him. For the first time, he wants to see a person." He looked at Mahuika.

"Items?"

"Items," he said. "I know nothing else, little killer. I am a simple old drunk. Come if you like. There is a small motorboat waiting for us. If you want to slit a throat, you can try his once you arrive. If you can reach it."


	20. Nothingface, Violence, Track 11

The sky, which Marama despised, was dark by the time they landed on a desolate beach. The man told the sisters to leave the boat and pointed to a group of subtropical groves growing along the shore.

"Push through those leaves, and you will find a dirt path. His home is a short walk from there. You can't miss it."

"Aren't you coming?" asked Marama.

"I was told to leave as soon as I brought her," he said. "I assume he wants to see her in private. But do give him this."

The man handed Marama his umbrella.

"What is it?"

"An ordinary silk umbrella," said the man. "A gift. I promised him he could have it, eventually. Today feels like a good day to give it up."

Marama cautiously took the umbrella, and watched the man push off the shores alone.

"Safe travels," he said. Marama watched until the outline of his shadow joined the darkness of the black waves.

"I want to know why I vape," said Mahuika.

Marama nodded. She told her sister to vape and follow her, and they walked through the groves, finding the trail the man had referenced.

It didn't take them long to come across an old car blocking their way. It was an old Cadillac without its front window.

Marama walked around the side of it, unsure if it was the home of the person who had invited Mahuika. As she did, she saw a house ahead of her.

As a professional astronomer hunter, Marama had traveled to almost every country in the world, and she had been inside many homes: igloos in the Canadian Arctic, yurts in Turkey, Urkelminiums in Urkeldelphia. The wooden house in front of her was still like nothing she had ever seen.

It was not remarkably tall, about three small stories high, but it was thin! On the side facing the path, it was as thin for a house as the skywatchers she had starved to death were for people. If she and Mahuika stood next to each other and held hands, if they stretched their free arms out they would have each been able to touch one side of the outer wall.

It didn't have windows, and the only entrance started at the thin side facing them. Marama hesitated at the door. Mahuika vaped and knocked instead.

"I want to know why I vape," she said.

There was no answer, spoken or unspoken.

She knocked again. "I want to know why I vape."

Marama gave it a try herself, knocking harder. "She wants to know why she vapes!"

Mahuika looked at her sister. "I want to know why I vape," she said.

Marama sighed and kicked the door down.

The man with the umbrella had not lied. Whoever invited them was a collector of items_._ There were more items packed inside the linear home than there were astronomers who had died at Marama's hands. Not one nook and cranny was free to stand on. The pile brushed against the ceiling in some places and Marama had to push it all out of her way in order to make any progress. Mahuika tailed her closely, vaping.

There was a silver coat-rack, home to several silk umbrellas like the one the man had given her.

Six paintings hung on the wall, four of women. The smallest painting of the four, a woman brushing her hair, had been drawn on a canvas material Marama struggled to identify. It was strangely wrinkled.

Hundreds of small glass jars stood on tall shelves. They were all empty.

A large empty cage with animal skeletons and taxidermies inside of it, all posed. There was a small newt, a parrot, dozens of snakes and tortoises and pheasants, two Muggle-Wump monkeys, and an old fox.

"Vape and be careful, Mahuika."

On top of a broken commode, there was a piece of chalk, an old shiny piece of paper with faded text, many expired chocolate bars, a deck of playing cards, and a fishbowl with a small green crystal inside of it. It was glowing.

There were books.

A tall revolving bookshelf, the type found in libraries, was near the back of the room. There was no pattern or organization to the titles Marama saw, cheap paperbacks sitting between thick medical textbooks and historical biographies. She tried to browse and see if any of the available literature could assist her in learning more about the person who had sent for her sister.

One book was blue and very slim.

A REPORT ON AN INTERVIEW WITH IMHRAT KHAN, THE MAN WHO COULD SEE WITHOUT HIS EYES

The one next to it appeared to be missing many pages.

THE RED PONY

She went down the same column, glancing longer at the titles interesting enough to warrant it.

ON THE HEALTH BENEFITS OF ROYAL JELLY

LITTLE MATADOR

COLLECTED WORKS OF CHAIM SOUTINE

A BEGINNER'S GUIDE TO TRUNCA

THE UNSURPRISINGLY VIOLENT HISTORY OF OLYMPIC SHOT PUT

101 RECIPES FOR COOKING LAMB

FINGERSMITHING

THE MINPINS, TORTOISE-RELATED SEXUAL ESCAPADES, AND OTHER TOPICS NOBODY CARES ENOUGH ABOUT TO WANT TO SEE REFERENCED

HOW TO COLLECT DREAMS

AN ADVAN

SALT, NOT SWEET: WHY I POLITELY TURNED WILLY WONKA DOWN ON HIS OFFER TO INHERIT HIS BILLION DOLLAR COMPANY, EVEN AFTER HE BEGGED ME

TO HUNT A WITCH

The last book caught her eye, and she pulled it off the shelf and flipped several pages in.

_I was recently speaking to a colleague of mine, who compared the average witch to an experienced hunter prowling about in the woods for sport. I have heard this analogy before, and I dislike it. It grants the witch too much humanity. _

_True hunters abide by rules. The young bison, the injured bison, the sick bison, are not targets for the hunter. There must be a challenge, an enemy who can provide a struggle. More hunters than not operate with ethics in mind, and those who fail to often face severe social and legal consequence._

_This does not describe the witch._

_Like a jungle cat, they seek out the weakest, youngest, most oblivious. I have encountered them in daycares, nurseries, and pediatric cancer wards. They enjoy creativity in how they cause suffering but they do not do it for sport. The burden of dishonor means as much to a witch as the dirt we scrape off our shoes after squashing an ant._

_The benefit of this is that it only takes a small amount of prevention to protect any individual child. Witches rarely fixate on individuals, and they will move on quickly after seeing that any specific target can offer up even meager resistance._

_Knowledge alone can be enough. If you are a parent, know the telltale signs of a witch and more importantly teach them to your children. Do not keep them ignorant out of a desire to protect their innocence. Let them be afraid. Fear will save them._

_Witches are always women. They should not be confused with ghouls, who are always men._

_Witches do not have fingernails. They have claws. All witches will have their hands covered up, traditionally with gloves._

_Witches are bald. They wear wigs at all times, which they are prone to scratch at._

_Witches have large nostrils and an acute sense of smell. They find the stench of children repulsive._

_Witches have strange eyes. Their pupils change colors, and staring into them will send chills down the spine of any normal person._

_Witches have no toes. They wear pointed shoes, but it is uncomfortable for them, and they can sometimes be seen limping._

_Witches have blue spit._

_In recent years, witches have begun keeping pigeons as servants, which have been magically bred. They have red feathers and feast exclusively on mice and sparrows, although they do not need to eat to survive._

Marama closed the book and placed it back on the shelf.

At last Marama and Mahuika reached the end, discovering a tall locker that went all the way to the roof. Marama opened it.

The broom inside the locker slowly stepped out and brushed long white hair out of its eyes. It was the longest broom she had ever seen, and had arms and legs, and it wasn't a broom but a man. He was wearing a blanket that had been cut up and stitched back together as a crude robe. Arms fell from holes on its sides and pooled together on the floor like bunches of long coiled rope.

His body was flat. His face was stretched _down_ and his eyes were misshapen.

He moved slowly and deliberately, and Marama heard his body creak. The arm coils unraveled and reached behind them, pulling a small bottle out of a box. He took out a handful of pills and moved them to his mouth, swallowing them without water. His neck was flat enough for Marama to see the pills sticking out of his skin as they slowly traveled down.

"Hello," he said. His voice sounded the way good chocolate suffered. He had a strong American accent.

"I vape," said Mahuika.

"You want to know why you vape," said the man. He stepped back into the locker and pushed his back against the wall.

"I want to know why I vape," said Mahuika.

"Who are you," said Marama. Her question marks had vanished after seeing the man's appearance. She spoke quietly.

"A loser."

Marama realized who he was. Any respectable astronomer-assassinator had to know her history. "You're... from that silly chocolate contest, back all that time ago. The boy who was stretched. You're Mike Teavee."

"No," said the man. "I am not Mike Teavee. Mike Teavee died when he was a child. For the crime of curiosity."

"He didn't," said Maruma. "He left the factory, people saw him. He was interviewed."

"No," he said. "I did. I was. His death was my birth. I am not the original. Teleportation, he dubbed it. Wonkavision. I call myself Michael, but it is wrong of me."

"I remember the video of you walking out of the factory," she said. "You weren't… you were bad, but it wasn't like this."

"My body did not know it had grown," said Michael. "It kept trying to grow as if I was what he was before the stretching. I thought it was fun, at the time. Being tall, getting taller by the day. But the aches started, and my body began to fail… by sixteen I could no longer bend my knees. I have not sat once in all that time. It would kill me. My body has not left this locker in years."

He reached again for his pills. Marama realized he was hurting himself by talking.

"I want to know why I vape," said Mahuika, epexegetically.

"Mahuika," said Marama. "Vape and give him time to rest."

"No," said Michael. "I am going to tell you why Mahuika vapes."

"You are going to tell her why she vapes?"

"You are going to tell me why I vape?"

"Yes," said Michael. "I am going to tell you why you vape. The answer is a lengthy one. What I say will sound strange, because being separated from the world makes a person forget how to properly converse. But it is all true. Please do not interrupt me until the end no matter how much you wish to. Are you ready?"

Mahuika vaped. Michael spoke.

"When Mike was a tiny baby, he started watching television. He loved it. It is special and nothing can replace it, in the same way nothing can replace music or literature or unfinished paintings of sexually unawakened farmers holding pitchforks. He thought he could watch television forever. For all his childhood Mike liked television because it was a place where he could see action. A building exploding! A gun shooting! A rocket firing! The television watched by little children with toy guns is characterized by actions."

Mahuika vaped.

"He still liked actions when he won the Golden Ticket. He went to the factory and Mr. Wonka murdered him and made me, and I liked actions because I was exactly like him. I did not understand that I was not him, and that he was dead, until I was much older. I left the factory and soon began to suffer from the reverberations of my condition. The next decade of my life was miserable. I could not leave my home, I was in pain. I hated myself. During that time, I discovered that I didn't care about actions anymore. Not in the same way. I wanted characters."

Mahuika vaped.

"Characters, characters. There are _people _who make the _actions _happen. It happened that I did not care if a building exploded if there was no one to care about. Who blew up the building, and why did they do it? Was there anyone inside the building that I worried about? I had to know! Before, characters were machines that caused actions, but they became something more to me. They had to be interesting. They had to make sense. They had to think and feel. The actions were still beautiful to me, but only together with the characters. Stories needed both."

Mahuika vaped.

"This made me stop hating myself. Instead I began to hate Mr. Wonka and Charlie, and my mother and my father. I was a little happier, and I loved watching television again. I learned that I wasn't Mike and began to accept difficult truths about the world. I invested money into television shows, choosing the ones with the best characters, and I quickly became rich enough to move away from my parents and hire caretakers for myself. I moved to New Zealand, on this island."

Mahuika vaped.

"Twenty years. Twenty years straight I watched for characters. Some of the hatred went away, and I forgot about what I lost. I kept watching, investing, and growing richer. The world without me became complicated, and television followed, and people no longer accepted the simple action stories that had dominated ratings when Mike was growing up. They needed characters! Good characters! But something, I felt, was missing."

Mahuika vaped.

"The world," said Michael. "The characters had to exist in a _world._ A real world. A world that made sense! A setting that connects it all, tying the actions to the characters. The world filled the hole! The world of a story completes it! A good story needs good actions, good actions need good characters, and good characters need a good world. This is television. This is storytelling. When I learned this, my hatred disappeared."

Mahuika vaped.

"There was an effort made to construct a machine that could create stories. It followed the first principle I had learned about storytelling, that all stories had to have interesting actions. It was called the Great Automatic Grammatizator. It connected words together and instantly created stories to be read, sold, or adapted."

Mahuika vaped.

"It worked, but it was crude and had no real intelligence. It analyzed books and scripts and searched for actions, which it would recycle and repackage. It could not make compelling characters because it did not understand characters. This is why the Greater Automatic Grammatizator was created. It was vastly more intelligent. It worked by creating minds, real minds with real thoughts, and having them interact with each other."

Mahuika vaped.

"It was a huge improvement! The stories were much better, but again something was missing. A world. The Greater Automatic Grammatizator only tricked the minds into thinking they were in a real world by manipulating a fake, superficial world. If a machine was going to create perfect stories, it needed to be able to create a true world for the minds to live in, that shaped and was shaped by them."

Mahuika vaped.

"This machine is called the Greatest Automatic Grammatizator, or the GAG. We are the minds inside of it."

Mahuika vaped.

"I discovered this myself. I once accidentally swallowed three cups of salt. I am very light, so I swallowed over twice my bodyweight in salt. I should have died. Instead, I disappeared and woke up in a spaceless space, a world of pure imagination. My mind was abstracted! When you are abstracted, you can see everything about the world we live in. I could see anywhere in the world in the present or during the past. I also saw the messaging."

Mahuika vaped.

"The world, us, and our actions are all made up of statements called messaging, and while I was abstracted I could see all of it. If you are abstracted, it is even possible to change the messaging, but only after you translate and understand it. This is very hard to do, and it takes a long time. I stopped watching television and continued to abstract myself, learning more and more about the world and how to translate it. I discovered that vinegar allows a person to abstract both their mind and body. I even found the messaging documentation explaining how the machine worked."

Mahuika vaped.

"The GAG is intelligent, but it requires someone to control it. A host must merge with the GAG and use it to influence, but not control, the world that the GAG creates. In the world that the GAG creates, interesting stories are born. The controller of the GAG and the master of our world is a pickle on the street. We are all inside of this street pickle. It is interesting, because there is a machine called the Great Automatic Grammatizator inside of the Greatest Automatic Grammatizator, but it is not like the real Great Automatic Grammatizator at all."

Mahuika vaped.

"A miniscule number of minds inside the world are designated as characters, and these are the only minds that can be abstracted. I am a character, and so are both of you. Minds who are not characters are real and have experiences in the same manner as us, and they can be affected by abstraction caused by others, but they cannot be salted or brined to be abstracted themselves. Most minds are not characters. Characters often have pivotal moments in their lives, which the GAG takes and forms into a coherent story to be experienced by those watching the pickle. Everything in this home is related to these pivotal moments."

Mahuika vaped.

"I wanted to help the world. If I discovered how to efficiently translate and alter the machine's messaging, it would have been possible to do anything. Minds once destroyed are unrecoverable, but anything else would have been possible. I decided I could not do it alone, and I wrote a letter to Mr. Wonka, the smartest man I knew, to tell him about it and request his help. He sent me back a basketball."

Mahuika vaped.

"I began to hate him again, but I could not linger on it. I continued to abstract myself until I had improved my translation abilities. I eventually discovered a trend in the GAG's messaging. Over time, minds have become simpler and the world has become more complex."

Mahuika vaped.

"Any mind consists of messaging. Messaging is logic. The messaging of a mind in the GAG is a list of true facts about it. The more true facts there are, the more complicated a mind is. My messaging says Michael is a man. Michael is tall. Michael is the result of a teleportation murder. Michael has eaten chocolate. Michael likes chocolate, and so forth. For an ordinary character like me, there are millions of facts listed. Minds are complicated."

Mahuika vaped.

"I managed to maintain rudimentary communication with the street pickle. I do not know why, but the street pickle enjoys minds with increasingly less complication. I discovered that it was trying to create a character with minimal complication! A character with one fact, instead of multiple facts."

_Mahuika vaped._

"This is not logically possible for a mind in the GAG, because they are in a world. If a mind is inside a complicated world, they are around other characters and many facts become logically necessary. If it is a fact that a mother is the mother to a child, it is a fact that the child is the child of the mother. The street pickle has more influence than we do over the world, but we can operate with abstraction through different channels than it can. I decided to negotiate with it. I told it that I would give it what it wanted, if it gave me the power of complete translation."

Mahuika vaped.

"It would not give it to me until I delivered on my promise. Through experimentation, I found a method of separating a character's messaging from the world's messaging. It was difficult, I was only able to do it once, and it damaged my ability to abstract."

"Me," said Mahuika. She vaped.

"Yes. I picked a fetus that had messaging indicating a likely stillborn. One dead baby versus everything. That was my cold logic."

Michael looked at Marama, apologetically.

"It worked partially. The separation of your messaging's logic created a character that could escape necessary truth. It is a fact that Marama is Mahuika's sister, but it is not a fact that Mahuika is Marama's sister. Auckland is where Mahuika was born, but Mahuika was not born in Auckland. Your mother's first child was a girl, but Mahuika is not a girl. It would be difficult for most people to actively describe Mahuika because of this, since they recognize that what they are saying isn't true."

Mahuika vaped.

"While this made it possible for you to only have one fact, you didn't. You had zero, and I could not add anymore, since I could no longer abstract at full strength. With zero facts, the pickle didn't recognize you as a character and didn't want you. I lost my ability to read and translate messaging, and could only watch."

Mahuika vaped.

"You lived your life. When you were five, an unknown entity intervened in the GAG and managed to add a fact. It wasn't the pickle. It suddenly became a true fact that Mahuika vaped. This made you a character."

"I vape," said Mahuika.

"I tried to communicate with the pickle again, but it still wouldn't accept you. This is what confuses me the most! I could do nothing to convince it, so I kept watching. I saw what I did to your mother and your family, and I regretted having caused you all pain and accomplishing nothing because of it. I decided I would reverse what I had done. It is hard to add large numbers of complicated facts manually, but I recently found a method that may allow it in special circumstances. It is only possible if we abstracted together in the same location."

Mahuika vaped.

"I added, at extreme difficulty, a very simple fact that would bring you to me."

"I want to know why I vape," said Mahuika.

"Yes," said Michael. "I did not explain the situation in the letter because I am not sure if it will work, and I did not want to promise a solution when I was not sure it would work."

Mahuika vaped. Marama was still.

"That is it," said Michael. "The sad story. I am sorry, Mahuika. I am sorry, Marama. I will try and fix it, but I can make no promises."

Marama disappeared.

_**W**_

Marama had disappeared. Michael was confused.

He remembered that she was a professional astronomer hunter. She had likely hidden herself, and was going to kill him and take revenge for what he had done to Mahuika.

"Marama," he said. "Please let me fix her, before you do what you may do."

Mahuika disappeared. Michael was more confused.

Everything in Michael's house disappeared. A man replaced them. He had changed, but Michael still recognized him.

"Mike," said the man. "I cannot believe it! Marama has been paused for twenty minutes, and you did not notice!"

"Charlie," said Michael.

"You did not take Mr. Wonka's advice. You would have been an excellent basketball player! Now you will only be a mediocre corpse."

"I had my suspicions," he said. "It was you who made her vape."

Charlie laughed. "Mike, you don't know anything. I didn't do anything to Mahuika."

"I am not Mike."

"You are right!" exclaimed Charlie. "You are a sad loser who loses losingly. Mr. Wonka and I laughed together at your letter. We never thought someone else would ever discover abstraction, let alone translation and execution! Not you! Never you, Mike."

"He broke you," said Michael.

"We have translated the messaging of millions of minds, Mike. We have hundreds with only one fact! Thousands with less than ten. Mr. Wonka and I tried your way, years ago. He died because of it. You cannot offer a one fact character to the pickle directly! It is a fickle pickle! You must use a formula. The street pickle will reject it without the formula."

"Formula?"

"See? You don't even know about formulas. You call it a street pickle! You don't even know the name. You can only watch, Mike! So watch and learn!"

Michael's face burst into balls of cancer, and he fell forward and hit the floor. He was shattered like a broken vase.

"Now I will have to delete the assassin's memories! We still have years until the second contest, corpse! Years! The formula must be recreated! The one-dimensionality cannot be presented without a formula. Mr. Wonka knew that! If only the five of us had been as simple as he needed us to be, back then..."

He poked at the head with his cane. Michael was still alive, somehow.

"Please," he said. "When you learn how to translate everything, help people. The world has too much pain. It could have none."

Charlie's laugh sounded the way good chocolate tasted when it was tired of talking to a deformed man's dying head.

"Mike! I do not care about this world, or the people in it, who deserve misery if it is happening to them. I want what Mr. Wonka wanted. To leave. I only want to leave."

Charlie vanished. Michael's head stopped worrying about him.

_**W**_

Mr. Bucket, who had unabstracted himself, walked over to Tide. He turned her on her side and took her helmet off.

Her eyes were like stars. Her eyes were not like stars because they were vast and white and beautiful and unconscious. Her eyes were like stars because they were uncomprehendingly hot spheroids comprised mostly of gas.

"It was too much for her," he said. "The absolute one-dimensionality of your mind gave her a stroke. Excellent work, Mahuika! It isn't a chocolate stroke but it will do."

The floor swallowed Tide and delivered her to the non-citizens hospital.

"I vape," said Mahuika.

"I didn't think it would be you," said Mr. Bucket. "Yes, when the six of you came through, it was obvious you were the only suitable candidate. I translated the other five myself, but they weren't the perfectly simple ones, not like you or the others I thought the pickle would have selected instead. In Scotland, there is a boy named Cold Cromwellingermmm. His one fact is that he compliments bald people. He was my first choice."

Mahuika vaped.

"My second choice was all the other children whose messaging I translated. The others that I managed to get down to one all have the same fact. They eat chocolate! They should have been guaranteed to solve the puzzle, but none of them did!"

He laughed.

"You do. Is it a coincidence? No. The pickle didn't want it to be that easy. It must have influenced it to have all those more interesting children win instead. The formula was followed in a way only it wanted. I accept that. You know what that means, Mahuika?"

"I vape," said Mahuika.

He smiled. "It means you win! It is truly a Mahuika and the Chocolate Factory: Drudge Repetition! My reason for doing this was simple, and it was all for a GAG! Let us go, go, go! Vape and follow me to the elevator!"

Mr. Bucket and Mahuika walked to the Great Glass Elevator. The doors closed.

"Up until now, I have pressed every button inside this elevator. All but one, Mahuika. Only Mr. Wonka has ever pressed this one."

He pointed to the only button without a label.

"In the Abstraction Room, we are over forty kilometers beneath the planet's surface. If you go down two-hundred and five kilometers further, you will reach Minusland, where the Gnoolies live. But if you keep going down and out, to the inner core of the planet... there is no lava, no heat. Science is wrong."

"I vape."

"There is only vinegar, salt, and the street pickle, as Mike called it. The avatar of the GAG. It is waiting. Vape and press the button. When we meet it, I will be able to go there. I can be happy there. I will finally be alone."

Mahuika vaped and pressed the button. The elevator rocketed down through the floor, faster than if it were falling through gravity alone.

"This is it," said Mr. Bucket. "We are building up speed! We are going, going, going! Where precisely are we going? You must know! You must! You are the fuel! You are my ticket to freedom! Tell me you know where we are going! Tell me you know where I am going!"

Mahuika vaped. Mr. Bucket cackled.

_"Solo!"_


	21. Chili and the Chocolate Factory

"Mr. President! You do not have time for indecision! We need an answer!"

Mr. Gun Gun, secretary of the Department of Anti-Astronomy: We Really Hate Stars and Related Things continued to beg President Nalak for an order. President Nalak had only been president for a day and Mr. Gun did not think he was up to the task. He refused to take any action.

His indecision had already killed billions. It was the end of the world!

President Kalan had been at the ceremony when the six children went into Wonkaland. Billions had been watching when he died! The four red pigeons that always were perched on his shoulders pecked him to death and flew away!

It escalated! It all escalated!

Aliens! A waggleporty of aliens had flown down from space! They were eating everyone! A group of secret astronomers snuck into the White House and told President Nalak the Champion of the World was dead! He had been caught in a salt hailstorm! They said that the Champion of the World was the only thing keeping the aliens away by shooting them down whenever they tried to come into the earth's atmosphere, and he was dead!

Mr. Gun had the men put to death for lying and practicing astronomy, but it didn't help! The aliens kept eating everyone!

It escalated! It all escalated!

Demons! They were crawling out of the ocean, giant red pigeons with four heads and wings made from scissors and mouths shoot out flaming moths! They were murdering all the children! A small elderly mouse in a little wheelchair snuck into the white house and told President Nalak that the Grand High Witch had kidnapped the woman with the finger and stolen her power! The mouse had been trying to stop her when a salt hailstorm gave her the chance to slip away!

Mr. Gun had the mouse sent to a Mouse Insanity Asylum, but it didn't help! The demons kept murdering all the children!

It escalated! It all escalated!

Babies! The ruinous babies! The first generation CHOCOR babies that had been exiled to Madagascar had begun another campaign of tantrums! They were following the orders of the new King Baby and his army of mechanical sheep-kangaroos! A famous doctor named George snuck into the White House and said that the King Baby had discovered how to harness the power of the crystals by using salt! The Lambaroos were working together to steal all the world's cake!

Mr. Gun shot Dr. George himself because he was getting sick of people sneaking into the white house, but it didn't help! The CHOCOR babies kept stealing cake!

It escalated! It all escalated!

Mr. Gun saw that his shoes were chocolate.

It escalated! It all escalated!

_**W**_

"Mahuika," said Mr. Bucket. "We are here. Vape and follow me."

Mr. Bucket and Mahuika left the Great Glass Elevator. The ride had been long.

There was no lava and no heat. Science was wrong. They were standing on the side of a dark street. Bushes and lamps lined the sidewalks. A pickle was sitting on the ground. Bright light shone from it.

Chili had read about pickles, but it was his first time seeing one in person.

"Hogan was his name," said Mr. Bucket. "He ate chocolate. He was the first fuel. Mr. Wonka and I, right before we brought him down here, we celebrated together with breakfast. We had a food fight! We fought to see who could throw more food at Hogan's face. He won. He threw an entire English or American breakfast at him. Black pudding, freedom pudding, bangers and mash, burgers and meth, beans and toast, guns and toast, fresh fruit, insulin."

He smiled. Chili hated that he felt bad for him. His voice sounded the way good chocolate tasted when it missed something, something that Chili missed too.

"The pickle has an abstracted form, which can only be reached in abstraction. This is the true physicalization of the pickle. To protect itself, it uses a Vinegar Solution, what we see as the light. If I tried to go any closer than I already am to enter it, the Vinegar Solution would brine and kill me."

Mahuika vaped.

"This is what happened to Mr. Wonka. When the pickle rejected Hogan, Mr. Wonka tried demanding an explanation from the pickle. He thought it might have been the beans and toast dripping from Hogan's face. We didn't wipe the food up before coming down. The pickle wrongly interpreted the question as a threat. This is the only time anyone has not deserved what happened to them. The pickle has a hard time understanding others when it must interact with them outside of abstraction."

He looked at the pickle.

"I can't bring Mr. Wonka back, Mahuika. But I will carry out his wishes and realize his dream. Vape, run forward, and touch the pickle with both hands to offer yourself as fuel. Keep touching it until I am gone, and then stop moving and wait for more orders! The other children are hiding in the bushes. Do not let them stop you!"

Mahuika vaped and ran.

Keerthi and Chili, both riding VIPs, flew out of bushes from different sides of the street. The VIPs were much quicker than Mahuika, but the final vape cloud she puffed before entering the light was revolting enough to make them swerve off course. They flew into each other and tumbled to the ground. Chili choked, fighting to breathe.

"You underestimate me, children! I know everything that happens in my factory! I know when children escape my citizens hospital!"

The citizens hospital was a chocolate closet.

"I know when children escape my noncitizens hospital!"

The non-citizens hospital was a chocolate coffin inside of the closet.

"I know when those nasty children steal the Lackluster Glass Lift! I know when they free my slaves and my clams and discover my plans and put terrible ideas into the heads of my employees! I know to take all of Mahuika's vape pens away and give her chlorine gas flavored WonkaJuice!"

JUROR and Tide ran toward Mr. Bucket, a delicious bask of chocodiles scurrying ahead of them. While he beat them away with his cane, JUROR aimed the Gummy Gun he had picked up in the Arsenry Room at Mr. Bucket's head.

He did not fire.

Mr. Bucket laughed as he continued to beat the chocodiles back. "JUROR! You cannot do it! You only truncate! You only trun-"

He fired for the purposes of art.

Mr. Bucket caught the sticky bullet with his tongues. They slivered out of his mouth and wrapped themselves around all the chocodiles, tossing them at Tide and JUROR.

He didn't throw the final chocodile, grinning. "This one is exactly as heavy as a chocodile should be, with a one idiot margin of error."

He ripped the chocodile's face off and reached into it with his hands, pulling out Lim, who was holding a tiny chocolate pocket pistol. Mr. Wonka took the candy from the baby and yeetyooted him into the pile of chocodiles with JUROR and Tide.

Chili managed to make it back to his feet. The VIPs were down.

"Chili," said Mr. Bucket. "This was always Charlie and the Chocolate Factory!"

"It won't be," said Chili. "Not after we stop you."

"I agree," said Mr. Bucket. "It will not! This world is being destroyed as we speak, and even the factory will disappear. Even if I did not succeed, the pickle would never agree to wait again. It has influenced the world with its salt and begun the race to the end. Almost everyone is dead and the pickle will remove the remainder itself soon. Only I will be extracted in exchange for bringing the pickle its fuel."

"It won't work. We spoke to the clams, and we know they aren't clams. They told us everything. It didn't work last," said JUROR.

"Only because there was no contest," said Mr. Bucket. "I have followed a formula!"

"Mahuika," said Keerthi, who was still on the floor. "Ignore him! Get away from the pickle!"

Mahuika did not listen to Keerthi. She was almost at the pickle.

"Children," said Mr. Bucket. He took a piece of candy from inside his hat and held it in the air. "What I ate now is called Truegat. If you eat Truegat and try to fib, strawberry steam blows from your ears. I want you to know I am being honest when I tell you."

Mr. Bucket ate the Truegat.

"I have cameras all around the world, which is why I know that your parents are dead. All of them are dead. JUROR, your parents were swallowed by Vermicious Knids."

Steam did not blow from Mr. Bucket's ears.

"No they can't be," said JUROR.

"Lim, your mother and father were listening to Chopin when they were crushed by a Lambaroo. They hated the music but only because you were not there to listen to it with them."

Lim cried.

"He's lying, Chetan! Don't say that! He is lying! He is!"

Chili did not think Mr. Bucket was lying.

"Tide, your mother was fighting the Grand High Witch together with your father. They weren't driven to fight by science or literature. They were fighting because of love. They drowned in that ocean of love and also each other's blood which is romantic."

"Shut up!" screamed Tide. "You liar! You devil!"

"Keerthi," said Mr. Bucket. "Your parents were crying. I am not sure what got them because my cameras stopped working. I only have the audio. You are a smart puzzle solver! Listen with me."

Mr. Bucket took off his head and threw it in the air. It floated and began to play the sound of a man and a woman shrieking together. Something could be heard dripping.

Keerthi burst into tears and buried her head into her knees, her hands over her ears.

"I have helped you, Chili," said Mr. Bucket. "They are all ready! You can murder them now like you wanted. Have a treat before the world ends. Candy is dandy!"

Chili had not apologized to the other children. He woke up in the closet, let them out of the coffin, and begrudgingly agreed not to murder them until they defeated Mr. Bucket.

It had not been as begrudging as he pretended it was. He liked all of them and wanted to apologize, but didn't know how. He had never apologized before.

They were all crying. If he had heard them a week ago, he would have laughed at them for being sad about losing the feeling. He didn't even remember having the feeling.

He didn't laugh. They were never going to feel the feeling again.

He ran up to Mr. Bucket to try and bring him down. Mr. Bucket's cane did not let him.

"It's over, children! Mahuika has touched it! You lose! You get what you deserve!"

Chili turned to check. She was touching the pickle with both hands.

"Let go, Mahuika!" shouted Chili. "Vape and let go!"

Mahuika did not vape or let go. With her hands on the pickle, she could not vape until Mr. Bucket's command was finished. Since his command would only keep her from vaping for a short time, she followed it.

Chili tried walking toward her. The light sent him flying back. It was like trying to climb a waterfall.

"You can keeping trying to approach it, if you like," said Mr. Bucket. "The pickle will brine you. It might be a good choice. I will see your decision from the outside. Goodbye! Farewell! You're doing great!"

Mr. Bucket turned into vinegar and became a puddle.

The puddle turned back into Mr. Bucket.

"It did not accept her," said Mr. Bucket. His voice sounded the way good chocolate tasted when it was denied a final chance to escape a dying world inside of a pickle. "The pickle is fickle."

Mr. Bucket smiled and reached into his hat. It was a bullet.

Chili watched him bite it.

"One of my delicious Bullet Biters," said Mr. Bucket. "They have a delicious peanut butter flavor, and triple the cyanide of any other…"

Mr. Bucket's mouth began to foam. His eyes rolled back and he fell.

Chili looked at Mahuika. "Mr. Bucket is gone," he shouted.

She took her hands off the pickle and waited for more orders, following Mr. Bucket's last command.

Keerthi walked next to Chili. She was still crying. Tears bunched up around her skin tag. It looked like it was catching them.

The other children could not stand because they were sad or babies, or sad babies.

"We have to stop it," she said. "He's right. I can't think about it until we stop the pickle."

"Stop the pickle," said Chili. They both knew it was hopeless. The children had been told by the clams what the pickle was. It controlled the GAG.

"We can do it," said Keerthi. "It's only a pickle on the street."

Mahuika waited.

**Chili and Keerthi are in a pickle. Their world is about to be truncated.**

**They have a precious few seconds remaining. Mahuika is the only one who can physically reach the street pickle, as she is inside the Vinegar Solution. Chili and Keerthi can issue her commands, but there is only enough time for her to follow one.**

**This is it. Chili must have a Fudge Revelation.**

**First, Chili will need to give Mahuika a command that can stop the pickle. It must be a command that Mahuika can follow. The pickle controls the world.**

**Chili will also need to explain why his command will work. If Chetan is unconvinced by his explanation, he will tell Keerthi to give Mahuika a separate command, which will take too much time.**

**Chili's command and explanation should both be concise. Answers should be posted to Fanfiction as reviews for this chapter. If the correct Fudge Revelation isn't Fudge Revelated, the story will**

**There is only one correct answer. **

**You have until May 23rd, at 4:00 AM, WLST. **


	22. Fudge Revelation

Chili Floss loved food. He had been three when his mother died, and he had scrounged and stolen every calorie devoured since himself, meals sourced from trash cans and broken vending machines and unguarded dog dishes.

His experiences in the factory had not changed his opinion on food. Food was pure lovesparket.

Before they ambushed Mr. Bucket at the pickle, he heard him speaking to Mahuika about the first fuel, Hogan. He ate chocolate.

The clams had told Chili about Hogan after they rescued them, but not in exhaustive detail. They failed to mention the full English or American breakfast Mr. Wonka had tossed on his face.

Chili remembered the breakfast exactly as Mr. Bucket described it. He couldn't forget food.

They did not clean it off his face before they offered him to the pickle. It would have been on him: black pudding, freedom pudding, bangers and mash, burgers and meth, beans and toast, guns and toast, insulin.

Fresh fruit. Fresh fruit that Mr. Wonka had thrown. Fresh fruit smashed into a liquid all over Hogan's face.

The pickle had refused Hogan. The pickle was refusing Mahuika. It had nothing to do with the formula and it never did. From the pickle's perspective, they were both flawed characters.

Chili had a Fudge Revelation.

"Mahuika!" he shouted. "Vape!"

Mahuika vaped, breathing a vape cloud on the street pickle. It was the first time she had vaped inside the Vinegar Solution.

"Why," said Keerthi without question marks. "Why. I thought you wanted to stop it! I thought-"

"I do!" screamed Chili. "I do! That will do it! It will! She only needed to vape!"

"The street pickle controls nearly everything! Chlorine won't hurt it!"

"No," said Chili. "Not the chlorine! It's the vaping!"

"What? The vaping? Why would vaping do anything?"

Mahuika's vape cloud sublimated the pickle. The world was saved and the GAG was finished. Chili told her.

_"Road Dill hates Juice!"_


	23. Some Time After Dinner

"What came next?"

A little boy was sitting on a dune in the middle of a vast dessert. There was a skin tag on his elbow. He was staring at a lamp, which was being held by an entitled skeleton. Far from him at the bottom of the dune, a man was waiting.

"Nothing. That was the end of the story," said the lamp.

"Was it?" The boy's voice sounded unsure. "Are you pretending to truncate again?"

"No," said the lamp. "It's over. Go away."

"Soon," said the boy. "I have questions. I want closure. The story was confusing."

"It wasn't," said the lamp. "If someone hears a story and is unsatisfied with the conclusion, it is never because of the teller."

"What about bad stories? It isn't your fault if someone tricks you into listening to a bad story."

"It is if you stay until the end. Which you did."

"I didn't say _your _story was a bad story," said the boy. "It isn't perfect, but I liked it."

"You did?"

The boy nodded. "You sound surprised. Did you not want me to like it?"

"Shut up," said the lamp. "Ask your questions. I will give you your closure."

The boy picked up sand, letting it pass through his fingers.

"What about his name?"

"Before the story started, he changed it."

He drew a small line where the sand had fallen.

"I call him Dad," he said. "Mom calls him Chili. I always thought it was his real name."

"It isn't. It's a nickname. His name is Chawer Hili-Hewon."

"Chawer Hili-Hewon," the boy said. "Why did he change it?"

"He didn't like it."

"Why did he choose Chili Floss as his new name?"

"He was six. At six, people are foolish."

"Tell me about it," said the boy. He was seven. "What about the pickle?"

"The pickle disappeared. No one knows where it went. After Mahuika sublimated it, she sent everyone to the new world, including the minds that had perished. This is our world."

"I thought Mr. Teavee said that it was impossible to recover dead minds."

"Not by the pickle," said the lamp. "When Mahuika took control of the GAG, she found a way."

"Our world isn't the same world Mr. Bucket was trying to travel to, is it?"

"No," said the lamp. "It is not."

"After Mr. Bucket was revived, what happened to him? Did he apologize?"

"Mr. Bucket and Mr. Wonka did not come to the new world. Mahuika did not let them."

"Did she destroy them?"

"No. They were exiled. I don't know where, but it was not where they wanted to go. It is impossible for minds to go where they wanted to go."

"Why was Grandpa Groinfogger mean to my dad when he was little? He is nice to me."

"He smoked WonkaTobacco. It gave him perfect health with a one brain cancer margin of error."

"What's cancer?"

"It's what made him crazy and killed him. I talked about it in the story."

"I don't remember."

"It doesn't matter. You will only hear about it in stories. Any more questions?"

"Who was Mr. Fantasticer Fox?"

"The son of Mr. Fantastic Fox."

"Was Mr. Bucket lying about Wonkanucleons? Did slavery make chocolate taste better?"

"It did."

"Why did all the winners come back to life at the end?"

"They never died in the first place. Mr. Bucket told the clams to heal them."

"Why?"

"He thought the formula might fail if they died."

"Why did my dad immediately become nicer after he woke up?"

"Banksy II sent him a dream while he was sleeping in the non-citizens hospital."

"Why didn't you mention the dream?"

"I didn't think you would want to hear about it."

"What was Peachtown? What was Happiness Central?"

"A man named James and his friends decided to start a Peach Farm in the sky, but there were already people living in the clouds."

"Oh. Did they fight over the territory?"

"No. They all became best friends and lived together peacefully and sold the best Peach Juice and vape juice in the world, but they disagreed over what the farm's name should be."

"Did they fight about that?"

"No."

"Which name was better?"

"Next question."

"Why was my dad mean to everyone?"

"Because he was sad about his life. He missed people. He suffered."

"Was the pickle a bad pickle?"

"It was a complicated pickle. It missed people. It suffered."

"So it wasn't bad?"

"It was complicated. Everyone is complicated."

"Did Mahuika vape?"

"Yes."

"Does Mahuika still vape?"

"No. She does not vape."

"Is everyone else happy? All the other winners and their families? JUROR and Tide and Lim?"

"Yes."

"Why didn't my dad tell me the story himself? Why did he bring me here to have you say it?"

"He was embarrassed. He thought you might think less of him."

The boy frowned.

"I don't."

"I know."

"The GAG made stories out of the lives of the characters. Do you know them all?"

"Yes."

"Can you tell them to me? I think your story would be nicer if I knew them. It would make more sense."

"I can, but I won't."

"Why not?"

"Your dad wants to tell them to you."

"He does?"

"He does. He loves them."

_**W**_

The boy walked to his father, who had a nervous smile on his face. He hugged him. They felt the feeling.

"Did you like the story?" his father asked.

"I did. Can you tell me one yourself before we go back?"

"We need to be home for dinner. Grandma doesn't like it when we make her wait."

"A short story, and we will walk while you tell it. But it has to be good."

His father thought.

"A short one. It's called Poison."

They started walking.

"There were two men who had traveled to a different country. It was the same country where your mother grew up. One of the men went to visit the other in his home. When he saw his friend, he was lying still in his bed and refusing to move."

"Was he sick?"

"No," said the boy's father. "There was a blanket on his stomach, and he said that a snake had slithered under it."

"A snake?"

"A krait. They are venomous. He was afraid it would bite him. His friend told him to call a doctor, and he did. The doctor was from the country the men were visiting."

"You can skip the little details."

His father smiled.

"The doctor pumped sleeping gas under the blanket to put the snake to sleep, and gave the man antivenom to help if he was bitten. After they pumped enough gas to put the snake to sleep, they went to pull the blanket off the man. There was no snake."

"What happened to it?"

"They did not know. They searched everywhere and found no snake. The doctor asked the man if he was sure it was a snake, and the man began screaming and calling him racist names. His friend took the doctor out of the room and apologized for him. The doctor told him that the man needed a holiday and left."

"Is that it? Did you truncate?"

"No. That is the end."

The boy thought about the story.

"I don't think there was a snake."

"I agree."

"But the story is called Poison."

"It is. Why do you think the pickle called it that?"

He didn't know. His father told him to think about it.

"Is that your favorite story from the GAG?"

"I like it, but no."

"Which one is?"

"The one about the man who cheated at cards. It's sweet."

"Can you tell it to me?"

"After we eat dinner," he said. "It would go well with desert."

**The End**


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